Biohazard
by Yellow Mask
Summary: Complete. A dangerous disease is spreading through Konoha like wildfire, and it is a race against time to find the source...and a cure. SasuSaku, NaruHina, NejiTen, ShikaIno.
1. First Infection

**Biohazard**

**By Yellow Mask**

**Spoilers:** None overt.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto.

**Chapter 1**

**First Infection**

Sakura muffled a sneeze with her hands as she bent over the scroll.

She'd caught a cold in Wave Country – not that she was surprised; her room had been so dusty she doubted it had been cleaned in years. There had probably been so many germs hovering around she should count herself lucky all she'd gotten was a cold.

Still, ever the optimist, Sakura saw this as an opportunity to practice her chakra healing in relation to illness. While any medic could heal injuries, only a small portion had the chakra control necessary to work with diseases. Because the immune system maintained such a delicate balance, the healer had to be very careful not upset it, as they'd end up doing the patient more harm than good.

A few months ago, Tsunade had told Sakura that she thought she had a definite future in such healing, and shoved a few of the best scrolls at her, with instructions to learn all she could.

Sakura had jumped at the chance. She had already mastered – or was close to mastering – most of the medical jutsu involved in healing injuries at the surprisingly young age of eighteen, and she'd been rather eager for a new challenge for some time.

And now, she had the perfect opportunity to practice. On herself.

Admittedly, it wasn't the most advisable course of action. The common cold – while relatively harmless to the body itself apart from a runny nose and a cough – was known to interfere with chakra-systems, making it difficult to perform jutsus.

Still, Sakura wanted to try.

To be sure she made no mistakes, she skimmed a passage she'd already memorised – a jutsu that strengthened her entire immune system against pathogens, originally designed to allow a medic to treat very infectious patients without worrying about becoming infected themselves. It was rather chakra-consuming, and so wasn't recommended for use over an extended period of time, but Sakura decided it couldn't hurt to try it, just to see if it did anything against her cold. It was designed to prevent infection rather than deal with a virus already present, but what was life without a little experimentation?

Sakura's hands flew through the seals, and she felt the warm glow of her chakra suffuse her body. It was tiring – a substantial portion of her chakra drained away like water in a bathtub after someone pulled the plug. But it should last the rest of the day, and boosting her immune system would probably help her recover from this cold that much faster.

The kunoichi glanced at the clock...and then bolted up from her chair with a curse. She was supposed to be meeting Naruto, Sasuke and Hinata at Ichiraku now!

She'd been so busy at the hospital lately that she hadn't had much time to see her friends since the end of her mission in Wave Country about a week ago, when they'd all gone out for ramen to celebrate her success. No matter how many times she told him it had only been a short, easy mission to heal a group of people whose boat had capsized, it seemed that any success, however small, was worth celebrating in Naruto's book.

The blonde had been disappointed that his friends hadn't been able to meet for so long, so Sakura had promised him she'd been able to make this lunch. She'd practically sworn on her parent's graves!

The medic shot out of her apartment and tore down the street.

-xxx-

"Hey, guys!" Sakura panted as she skidded to a halt beside the ramen stand, her words interspersed with several violent coughs. "Sorry I'm late – I got caught up in this scroll Tsunade lent me."

"Still got that cold?" Naruto frowned. "I think Hinata's got it, too – she was coughing a bit before."

As if to verify Naruto's statement, the dark-haired girl sneezed.

Sakura winced as she slid into a seat beside Sasuke. "You probably caught it from me – sorry, Hinata."

"It's o-okay," Hinata smiled, coughing a little as if to punctuate her words.

Sakura smiled a little as she caught Naruto's concerned glance towards the Hyuuga.

These ramen lunches used to be a Team 7 quirk until Sakura, Naruto and Hinata were given a mission together. Naruto had suggested going out for ramen afterwards, and had cheerfully insisted on Hinata coming along.

Sakura had seen that as a promising sign. And since then, she'd noticed that Naruto seemed much more interested in Hinata than could be explained by simple friendship. He'd begun to ask the medic what she thought of Hinata, if she thought she was just being nice to him or if she seemed to genuinely like him (at this point, Sakura had seriously considered knocking him on the head and informing him that she'd been in love with him for years).

Keen to make sure her friends found happiness, Sakura had told Hinata of these conversations, and encouraged her to make a move. It hadn't happened yet, but Sakura was nothing if not optimistic.

"So, Sasuke, how's your probation been going?" she asked.

The man next to her scowled, as though he'd swallowed something distasteful.

"That good, huh?"

She giggled a little as she twirled the noodles around her chopsticks and took a generous bite. Unfortunately, the giggles turned into a chesty, hacking cough, and Sakura soon found herself choking.

Sasuke's hand came down on her back, dislodging the food stuck in her throat.

"Thanks," Sakura grinned once her coughs petered out.

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

Sakura shook her head as she resumed eating. She and Naruto had thought Sasuke was moody and quiet before his jaunt to Sound, and when he'd returned, they'd soon learned that they didn't know the meaning of the words.

The medic felt a frown tugging on her lips as she recalled the awkward, stilted conversations that had made up much of the former Team 7's interaction in those first few months. At least, until the three of them had somehow silently reached a tentative truce. She knew Naruto was trying to be forgiving, trying to just revel in the fact that he had his friend back...but at the same time, she didn't think he could just forget Sasuke's betrayal.

For her part, Sakura had found Sasuke's return unendingly frustrating. While he had been gone, she had told herself she'd grown up, that she wanted to bring him back because he was her friend, that she wasn't in love with him anymore...

Then he'd returned, and she found she'd been wrong. She loved him just as much as ever.

It was nothing short of maddeningly frustrating. Though she kept telling herself she was older and she should know better, some part of her was still hurt by every cold glance and dismissive comment. While she recognised that Sasuke – in his own way and as much he'd allow himself to – was trying to reconcile with her and Naruto, she knew that it was only as friends; he wasn't trying to reconcile with her the way lovers did after a spat.

And Sakura hated that it bothered her. She hated that there were times when an unusually gentle or kind gesture would give her a flash of hope, only to have it crushed out again by contemptuous words. It was in Sasuke's nature to be acerbic, but the fact that he didn't seem to care enough about her to make the effort to curb his words and actions a little was rather depressing.

Sakura's nose began to run again, and she fished a few tissues from her pocket.

Sasuke watched as Sakura blew her nose, sniffling almost as miserably as Hinata was. He wondered if she was taking anything for her cold.

While his current probationary position in Konoha made for some very slow, boring days, he couldn't deny that he looked forward to these lunch meetings at Ichiraku. He could be himself around Naruto and Sakura – he didn't have to watch his words in case he offended them and they decided to report him to the Hokage and get him locked up.

And yet, at the same time, some part of him felt strangely rejected as Naruto and Sakura regaled him with stories of the lives they'd made in his absence. He knew it was stupid – if anyone should be feeling rejected, it was them – but he couldn't seem to help the irrational thread of resentment that snaked into his gut.

It took a while to admit to himself that when he left for Oto, some part of him had foolishly believed that everything would stay in stasis until he returned. That Naruto would still be eager for a spar, reveling in their competitive rivalry, that Sakura would leap into his arms as though nothing had ever happened...

But there had been nothing like that. Instead, there had been awkward silence and averted gazes, half-hearted conversations and nervous meetings. Naruto had been tentative and hesitant, and it had seemed as though Sakura was flat-out avoiding him.

It had gotten better in stops and starts, as they'd gradually stumbled and limped towards a semblance of what they'd once had, but Sasuke had never forgot the lesson those long, painful months had taught him. He had put everything on hold for his revenge, but the world hadn't stayed static.

Sakura was the prime example. She didn't stay in love with him – she moved on. She was obviously giving him another chance at friendship, but the doors to her heart were shuttered and barred and he not only didn't have a key, he couldn't even pick the lock.

There had been times when he thought she was close to saying something, when she looked at him and her eyes seemed to hold the soft light they used to all those years ago when she had been in love with him.

But she never said anything, and Sasuke told himself – repeatedly – that he had no right to be disappointed.

Though he did feel cheated. He could admit to that. Sakura had always been willing to offer him love, and when he thought he was finally ready to accept it, maybe to give some of it back...she didn't want it anymore.

Sasuke wasn't sure if he believed in god, but he was sure someone was having a cruel laugh at his expense.

"Hey, you guys are real quiet today, what's up?" Naruto chimed in, apparently having just realised that he and Hinata were conducting a conversation by themselves.

Sakura smiled. "Just thinking about something. What were you saying?"

"Hinata was telling me she's been getting a lot of missions lately," Naruto filled her in. "And I was saying you've been running yourself pretty ragged with the hospital nowadays."

"True enough," Sakura sighed, sniffling a little and wiping her nose. "I'm learning a new set of healing jutsus – ones that help the immune system."

"D-didn't you kn-know those already?" Hinata asked.

"Not really. You see, there are a lot of levels of healing, each one increasingly more complex. The first level is just your basic coagulating and splinting jutsus – stop bleedings, force broken bones to align and all that. One step above that is actual healing jutsus, when you force the skin or blood vessels or bone to knit back together. Beyond that are healing jutsus to do with organs; they tend to be more complex because organs tend to have several different types of tissues, so you have to have a pretty good grasp of chakra manipulation to repair them."

A sneeze interrupted her for a moment. "And because poison can damage so many systems in so many different ways and to so many different degrees, jutsus that deal with that are even more advanced. And finally, there are jutsus that deal with diseases and the immune system. Because the immune system varies from person to person, and because it's in such delicate balance, it takes very high levels of chakra control to be able to manipulate it safely. Tsunade told me there are only about eight or so medics at the hospital whose chakra control is at the level that they can do that – she gave me these scrolls in the hope that I'll learn these jutsus and help swell the ranks."

"Because your chakra control is really just that awesome!" Naruto exclaimed.

Sakura laughed, feeling a pleased flush rise to her cheeks. Naruto's praise was always so heartfelt and genuine that she couldn't help but be touched by it. "Thanks, Naruto."

"So if you complete the training, you'll be able to cure diseases?" Sasuke queried.

"_When_ I complete the training, not _if_," Sakura said severely. "And yeah, I'll be able to help treat diseases."

It irritated her that Sasuke still seemed to doubt her abilities and determination, even though he'd had ample evidence of both. What truly frustrated her, though, was the fact that if Naruto had said such a thing, it wouldn't have bothered her – she wouldn't have taken it as slur on her abilities, because she knew Naruto respected her.

Sometimes, Sakura really hated how Sasuke could make her feel.

"Ah, Sasuke knows you rock, Sakura," Naruto assured her. "Don't take his whole bastard-ness personally."

Sasuke scowled at his bowl of ramen. He hadn't meant to imply that Sakura couldn't master that level of healing jutsus – since his return, he'd seen her heal mortal wounds beyond any other healer's ability as easily as if she were stitching up a flesh wound. He knew she was considered one of the most talented medics since...well, ever...he hadn't meant to imply...

But it seemed Sakura had already forgotten about it, as she continued to discuss the finer points of medical jutsu with Hinata and Naruto.

She didn't care about his opinion anymore – and why should she? The views and feelings of a kin-killer and village traitor counted for nothing. Sakura was friendly enough to him, but Sasuke doubted she really cared what he thought of her anymore.

"I should b-be going now," Hinata said eventually, fishing out her purse as she coughed sharply. "How much d-do I have to p-pay?"

"I'll pay, Hinata – don't worry about it!" Naruto insisted, digging out a handful of crumpled notes and dropping them on the counter. "And I'll walk you home."

Hinata flushed, but nodded as she and the blonde started down the road towards the Hyuuga compound.

Sakura was struck by the urge to squeal. Naruto was so smitten it was almost unbearably adorable.

"What are you smiling about?" Sasuke grumped.

"They're so cute, aren't they?" Sakura cooed, watching her friends' backs as they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. "Paying for her meal, walking her home...I think our little Naruto is all grown up and has fallen in love!"

Sasuke's curling lip expressed his thoughts about that concept rather eloquently. "She's technically the Hyuuga heiress, and he's the vessel for the Kyuubi. Do you really think her family will allow them to see each other?"

He was only just quick enough to duck out of the way of Sakura's fist as she aimed it at the back of his head. "Shut up, killjoy – what would you know about love?"

Sasuke frowned, and jabbed his chopsticks into his bowl with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

"I think Naruto could be really happy with her," she continued. "And you know how he is – if he decides he wants to date Hinata, no one's opinion but Hinata's is going to matter to him."

The medic smiled, leaning her chin on her hand. "It's sweet, really – Hinata was in love with him for all those years...it's nice to see her patience rewarded."

She told herself she wasn't bitter. A little envious, maybe...but not bitter.

For his part, Sasuke wondered if that was a subtle barb aimed at him, then immediately told himself it couldn't be. After all, that would imply Sakura was still in love with him.

-xxx-

Naruto smiled at Hinata as they walked towards the Hyuuga compound, wondering why the dark-haired girl had been hanging out with them lately. He'd invited her, yes, but he hadn't really expected her to agree so consistently; he figured she'd come along every now and then, not attend every ramen lunch as religiously as he and the others did.

But it was nice having her around – he'd grown closer to Hinata since his return from his travels with Jiraiya, the slow, tentative connection happening so gradually he'd barely noticed it. They'd found themselves on the same mission team along with Sakura, he'd invited her for post-mission ramen, and then he was inviting her to every ramen dinner with Sakura and Sasuke after that.

They'd talked, grown closer, and it seemed that one moment he was inviting her to the first ramen dinner, and the next, he was looking at her and thinking she was the woman he'd want to spend his life with.

But he knew she wouldn't feel that way about him. She was the first child of the Hyuuga Main House, and he was the vessel for a demon. True, Hinata probably wasn't aware of that, but she had to know he was an outcast – she had to know that he was beneath her.

Hinata coughed and swallowed, darting a nervous glance at the man beside her as she wrung her hands anxiously. She had been trying to gather the courage to ask Naruto out for several weeks now. Sakura had been encouraging her, saying that if she didn't take a chance, she'd never know, but it was difficult to swallow her fear of rejection and risk the potential pain.

But Hinata had promised herself she would do it today. She would tell him how she felt, and then...well, then she'd hear his answer.

She found herself feeling a little lightheaded, but she was determined to work through it. She hadn't passed out in Naruto's presence for nearly a year, and she was not going to start again now!

The dark-haired woman clenched her hands, set her jaw, and took a deep breath through her nose.

"Naruto..." she began, but was cut off as her chest suddenly spasmed and a storm of coughing exploded from her throat.

"Wow, that sounds pretty bad, Hinata," Naruto commented. "Maybe you should..."

His voice trailed off, his eyes growing round as Hinata felt moisture on her upper lip. She touched it automatically, wiping at the liquid she could feel collecting on her skin...and when she drew her hand back, her fingers were stained red.

"Your nose is bleeding," Naruto said quietly, sounding worried. "Why is it bleeding? Did you hit it, or-"

"I don't know," Hinata whispered, confusion making her voice soft as she felt more blood trickle from her nostrils.

She concentrated on breathing through her mouth as she mopped at the fluid with a few tissues she had stashed in her pocket.

But the blood kept coming.

"You need to see a doctor," Naruto said firmly, and she felt one warm hand grasp her shoulder firmly, steering her towards Konoha's hospital.

"It's just a nosebleed," Hinata protested, even as the lightheaded feeling progressed to a feeling of being slightly-off balance, as though she were standing on the deck of a ship caught in a storm.

"You shouldn't bleed from the nose for no reason!" Naruto insisted, stubbornly pressing her onwards.

Hinata felt strangely detached from her body as coloured spots began to cloud her vision, and long experience told her she was about to faint. "I need to sit down – I think I'm..."

But darkness descended before she could finished her sentence.

Naruto yelped, his arms lunging out as Hinata's legs folded beneath her and she lurched forward. He caught her just under her arms and yanked her to him, supporting her head against his chest as his arms kept her body from collapsing, the blood from her nose smearing on his jacket.

"Hinata!" he yelled, feelings the beginnings of panic creep into the edges of his mind. He knew instinctively that this was very different from the fainting spells she used to be known for – back then, she'd go bright red before she collapsed, but now, she'd just gone pale.

"Hinata!" he yelled again, punctuating his words with an awkward shake. "Come on, Hinata, wake up – this isn't funny!"

Hinata made no reply. Her eyes remained shut, and blood continued to leak from her nose.

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this chapter._


	2. The Chakra Eaters

**Chapter 2**

**The Chakra-Eaters**

"So she just collapsed?" Sakura asked. "Just like that?"

"Yeah," Naruto nodded like a wobble-headed doll. "Just a little after the nosebleed started. What's wrong with her? Is she going to be okay?"

"Calm down, Naruto," Sakura said firmly, gripping him by the shoulders. "Just calm down – you brought her to the hospital, you did the right thing. I'm sure the medics are figuring out what's wrong with her even as we speak. The woman treating her is one of the best – I've worked with her a lot these past days."

Sakura had been finishing off her bowl of ramen and getting ready to pay her portion of the bill even as Sasuke did the same, when one of Naruto's clones had dashed into the scene, exclaiming that Hinata was in the hospital and they had to come right away.

Sakura didn't know if Sasuke would have been reluctant to troop to the hospital to check on Hinata, because she hadn't given him much of a choice. She'd simply seized his collar and dragged him down the road – she wasn't sure if his protests were against going to the hospital, or against the manner in which he was being escorted there.

"But what if it's something bad!" Naruto exclaimed, looking quite terrified.

"Calm down, Naruto!" Sakura repeated. "There could be many reasons for Hinata's nosebleed – she probably just irritated the blood vessels somehow."

"But she passed out right after!" Naruto insisted. "And not like she used to either – her cheeks didn't even flush, she just went all pale and fainted on the spot."

"Fainting can have many causes as well," Sakura said, trying to soothe him. "A sudden drop in blood pressure, if she hasn't been eating enough lately..."

"But she just had lunch!"

"Idiot, shut up!" Sasuke snapped. "The medics are working on her, and your worrying isn't going to help."

Sakura's hand shot out to grasp Naruto's jacket and hold him back as her patience finally wore out. "If either of you throw a single punch in this hospital I will fling you both out the window and refuse to heal you, no matter how many broken bones result!"

She took advantage of the brief silence that earned her. "Now, I'm going to go into that room and find out exactly how far the diagnosis has progressed. Naruto, you are going to stop panicking, sit down, and you will not move until I come back, understand?"

Naruto sat down hastily and nodded vigorously.

"And you, Sasuke, are going to shut up, accept that not everyone is an emotionless bastard like you, and stop provoking Naruto, are we clear?"

Sasuke scowled and folded his arms, and Sakura supposed that was as much a gesture of acquiescence as she could hope for.

With one last suspicious glare, Sakura opened the door Naruto had been pacing in front of and slipped inside.

-xxx-

Hinata awoke slowly, blinking as she wondered why she heard Sakura's voice above her but saw brown eyes. Her nose was clogged with what felt like flakes of rusty iron, which she knew was blood that had dried inside her nostrils.

Another blink as the world slid back into focus, and Hinata realised she was lying on a hospital bed, with a brown-eyed woman hovering above her as Sakura leaned against the closed door, telling the woman that Naruto was worrying himself sick outside and did she have any idea what was wrong with Hinata?

"You're awake," the dark-eyed medic observed quietly. "How do you feel?"

"T-tired," Hinata said honestly, propping herself up on the examination bed.

"Don't feel particularly hot or cold? No numbness in fingers or toes?"

The Hyuuga shook her head, her eyes seeking the pink-haired woman against the door. "How's N-Naruto?"

"Worried sick," Sakura said bluntly. "He was practically wetting himself in the corridor earlier – he seemed convinced there was something fatally wrong with you to make you pass out like that."

Her words were light-hearted, but Hinata could see concern shadowing Sakura's green eyes. "How are you feeling? Oh, right, you already said you were tired..."

Hinata smiled at her friend, and her eyes moved to the medic hovering above her. "What's wr-wrong with m-me?"

"A mild bacterial infection as far as I can tell," the medic informed her. "Should clear up with a few doses of antibiotics. But as I'm still not sure if it was the infection that caused your nosebleed and your collapse, I'd like to keep you in the hospital overnight for observation."

Hinata nodded, but Sakura frowned. She knew what the medic meant by that comment – the woman had no idea why Hinata had collapsed, and they wanted to see if something showed up overnight.

The bacterial infection could be explained – perhaps an injury Hinata received on a mission that wasn't cleaned properly – but Sakura had never heard of an infection that could cause nosebleeds and fainting. Then again, the fact that Hinata seemed to have caught Sakura's cold might have exacerbated the symptoms.

"Well, I suppose I'll leave you to get her settled in," Sakura told the brown-eyed medic. "I'll go outside and keep Naruto from exploding with anxiety."

-xxx-

"So you're really feeling okay?" Naruto asked, hovering over Hinata as she lay on the bed in pale hospital scrubs.

Hinata nodded, blushing a little as Naruto checked her temperature by placing his hand on her forehead.

"Stop checking her temperature," Sakura sighed. "We medics actually do know something about the human body these days – trust us when we say she has one. And before you panic, it's actually a good sign; it shows her body's fighting the infection."

"I know, I know," Naruto said, not stopping what he was doing. "But what if it changes?"

"Her temperature hasn't changed since the last seven times you checked it, idiot," Sasuke muttered.

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off when a nurse came into the room and announced that visiting hours were over.

"But..." Naruto trailed off, trying to summon a sufficiently convincing argument from the air. "But...but..."

"Come on, Naruto," Sakura sighed, latching one hand in his collar and practically dragging him from the room. "You can come back tomorrow morning, and in the meantime you can go to Ino's and get Hinata some flowers, how's that?"

"Really?" Naruto brightened almost instantly. "Yeah, you hear that, Hinata? I'll be back tomorrow, and I'll bring flowers, okay?"

The Hyuuga giggled. "W-wait, Sakura – c-could you-?"

"I'll tell your family what's happened while Naruto's off buying flowers," Sakura confirmed, covering her mouth as a cough interrupted her. "Don't worry about it."

Sasuke made some sort of vague nod in Hinata's direction, and stalked out. It didn't surprise Sakura overmuch – calling the Uchiha antisocial was describing him kindly.

"S-see you t-tomorrow," Hinata waved.

-xxx-

"What are you brooding about?" Sasuke asked.

"I am not brooding," Sakura said loftily. "I am _considering_. Brooding is _your_ specialty."

His face told her he wasn't amused by her quip.

"I'm worried about Hinata," she admitted. "I keep going over her symptoms in my head again and again, and I still can't come up with any known disease that would cause them. I mean, nosebleeds are generally a sign of stress or trauma to the head, not a symptom of bacterial infection."

Sasuke tilted his head and regarded her. "So you don't think the antibiotics will work."

The medic shrugged. "I don't really know. Maybe. But the fact that they're keeping her overnight tells me they're not too sure what's wrong with her. It's probably nothing, but it's just...worrying..."

Sakura sighed, which turned into a cough halfway through. "The trouble with being a medic is that when your friends get sick you know exactly what's happening to them. And you can't stop yourself thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong."

She pulled a face. "Anyway, I'm off to the Hyuuga compound to tell them about Hinata being ill. See you later."

She turned off the main road, but was surprised when Sasuke turned with her. "What are you doing?"

He gave her one of those flat stares she could really learn to hate. "Is there some reason you need to be alone?"

"Not really..." Sakura said slowly.

For a moment, she wondered why Sasuke would accompany her to the Hyuuga compound, then reminded herself he was on probation – it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be. Still, she was surprised he wasn't leaping at the chance to go training.

Chalking it up to Sasuke's mysterious moods, she shrugged and went her on her way, with the Uchiha at her side. "Well, if you're coming with me, I expect you to make conversa-"

A loud sneeze cut her off mid-sentence. Sakura sniffled miserably and cast around for a handkerchief or tissue. She was sure she'd left one in her pocket...

"Here," Sasuke said shortly, producing a handkerchief with the Uchiha crest on a corner.

"Is there anything in your house without your family crest on it?" Sakura asked as she finished blowing her nose. She surveyed the unappealing mess she'd made of the previously spotless material. "I'll wash it and give it back to you tomorrow."

Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets. "Keep it."

A small furrow appeared between Sakura's eyebrows as she wondered why he was giving her something with the Uchiha symbol on it. It almost seemed like...like he was somehow saying she was a part of his clan.

Sakura snorted to herself and shook her head. He probably just had so many other handkerchiefs at home he didn't want one that she'd sneezed on.

Sasuke watched as the medic folded up the square of material and slipped it into her pocket. For some reason, he liked the idea of Sakura carrying something with the Uchiha fan on it. Liked the idea of her drawing it out, of people seeing the insignia and knowing whom it belonged to. Knowing who had given it to her and whom she'd accepted it from.

Sasuke didn't smile, but his smirk was gentler than usual.

-xxx-

Naruto eyed the plants that covered the shelves and floor of the Yamanaka's flower shop with the expression of a man out of his depth.

_'What kind of flower do you get for someone in the hospital, anyway?'_ some part of his mind wailed. _'I never knew there were so many!'_

He hopped from one foot to another, the adrenaline still circulating in his veins making him jittery. He'd panicked when Hinata had collapsed on him like that – he'd picked her up in his arms and sprinted to the hospital as fast as his legs and a touch of borrowed Kyuubi chakra could take him. It was only when the medic had ordered him out of the examination room that he'd finally thought to send a clone to Sasuke and Sakura to tell them what had happened.

He'd paced restlessly in the corridor while the medic worked to diagnose her, his mind running wild and taunting him with the knowledge of every dreadful disease he'd ever heard of, and making up a few along the way.

Even when Sakura relayed the medic's diagnosis – a bacterial infection – the worry still hadn't dissipated. He didn't know what kind of bacteria made people collapse in the middle of the street and bleed from the nose, but he was willing to bet it was a nasty one.

_'But the medics are treating her,'_ he told himself. _'They're even keeping her in the hospital to make sure she's okay.'_

But it did nothing to soothe the hard knot of worry burning in his chest.

"Are you buying something or are you just going to stare blankly at the flowers?" Ino asked.

"I want something for Hinata – she's in the hospital," Naruto explained.

Ino's back straightened as she gave Naruto her full attention. "Hinata's in the hospital? What's wrong with her?"

"The medic said it was some kind of infection," the man told her, still staring at the plants. "What kind of flowers do you give someone who's in the hospital?"

"Depends – what kind of message do you want to send?"

"Message?" Naruto echoed.

Ino gave him an assessing glance, then – deeming him hopeless and in desperate need of assistance – just sighed and made her way to him, snatching a handful of blue flowers on the way. "Give her these."

"What are they?" Naruto asked, fingering one of the petals.

"Forget-me-nots," Ino said succinctly. "I think they're appropriate for what you want to say."

"What do I want to say?"

Ino rolled her eyes. "Trust me – she'll love them. Now pay up, go home and put them in water so they won't wilt before tomorrow."

"Right!" Naruto handed over a crumpled note. "I've got a jug at home I can put them in!"

Ino briefly toyed with the idea of asking him why he didn't have a vase, but decided against it.

The bell over the door jingled loudly, and then Sakura and Sasuke were entering the shop.

"-don't see why you had to glare at him like that, Sasuke..." they could hear Sakura finish as the door swung shut behind her.

"He was irritating me," Sasuke muttered darkly.

He chose not to mention that his irritation stemmed from the fact that the white-eyed Hyuuga male that had answered the door had been checking Sakura out.

Sakura flicked her eyes heavenward as though praying for patience.

"Hey, Forehead," Ino chimed. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Likewise, Pig," Sakura rejoined, before addressing Naruto. "We knocked at the Hyuuga compound and told some random cousin of Hinata's that she was ill. You should count yourself lucky Neji's on a mission right now, or he'd be after your blood."

"But I didn't do anything!" Naruto wailed.

"Like he'd care," Sasuke scoffed.

Sakura's eyes lit up when they landed on the small blue flowers clasped in Naruto's hand. "You're getting Hinata forget-me-nots?"

The blonde man nodded, looking down at the bouquet. "Yeah, Ino told me to buy them."

At his words, the two women exchanged a conspiratorial glance.

"Why?" Naruto asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, Naruto," Sakura grinned. "I think those are just the flowers for her."

"But-"

"Trust me."

_'After all,'_ Sakura thought fondly, _'Forget-me-nots are supposed to symbolise true love.'_

-xxx-

Sakura smothered a yawn-turned-cough with her hand, blinking and cursing the early hour she'd risen at.

She'd arrived at the hospital at seven in the morning to start her shift, and had worked for nearly four hours straight. Now – during her lunch hour – she was going to check on Hinata.

Somehow, the medic wasn't surprised to see that Naruto had beaten her to it, but she was surprised to see him out in the corridor, clutching his small bundle of forget-me-nots and looking distressed.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Naruto whirled around. "Sakura! I was trying to find you earlier, except the reception lady said you were really busy 'cause it's holidays at the Academy and all the kids are getting into trouble now that they don't have school, but you said you were going to check on Hinata later and I should just wait outside her room for you because-"

"Woah, woah, woah!" Sakura said, holding up her arms as if to stave off impending attack. "Calm down! Take a deep breath!"

She waited until the blonde did so. "Now, what's wrong?"

"It's Hinata!" he wailed. "She's gotten worse! She seemed fine this morning – Hanabi and I were here to see her, but then Hanabi had to go to training – but then she just got really bad! Her nose wouldn't stop bleeding, and she just passed out while we were talking! And then the medics rushed into the room and I had to leave, and I don't think she's woken up yet! And they told me that the medic who treated her yesterday just got sick, so they're going to move her and Hinata into something called an isolation room."

Sakura swallowed, feeling a heavy ball of lead sink into her stomach. That didn't sound good – this wasn't like any bacterial infection she'd ever heard of. Isolation rooms were reserved for patients with dangerous, highly contagious diseases.

"So...what do you think's going on?" Naruto asked, sounding lost. "Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know," Sakura said honestly. "But I know how I can find out. Come with me."

She took Naruto up several flights of stairs to the Isolation wing, locating the entrance by virtue of the clear glass airlock that protected it. Instructing Naruto to wait outside, Sakura performed the jutsu to strengthen her immune system, then stepped through the door.

Naruto watched her make her way down the corridor, peering in rooms, before she finally entered one, the door snapping shut behind her.

He shifted on the spot, restless fingers mutilating the flowers in his hands as he waited. Because if there was one thing Naruto hated doing, it was waiting.

Because he wasn't doing anything. He wasn't doing anything to help, to fix the problem, to try to make Hinata better...all he could do was wait and hope everything was alright. He couldn't actually do anything.

And Naruto hated being helpless.

-xxx-

Sakura leaned against the wall of Hinata's bedroom, staring at the unconscious girl, wondering what on earth they were going to do.

The medics she'd found in Hinata's room had been using their chakra to slowly, carefully, analyse what the bacteria were doing, and they told her they had come to some disturbing conclusions.

The bacteria were feeding on Hinata's chakra channels, degrading them and somehow using the chakra they'd consumed to sustain and strengthen themselves. Somehow – the medics weren't quite sure how – the bacteria were using the chakra as a defense against Hinata's immune system, while they were somehow capable of tolerating contact with concentrated chakra themselves.

That was why the antibiotic Hinata was prescribed hadn't even made a dent – no antibiotic could, because Hinata's chakra was being used to enhance the pathogen's capabilities. Sakura had never heard of any bacteria using chakra, but this species could apparently feed on Hinata's like a leech, using it as an inexhaustible source of pure energy.

The medics believed she'd been infected days ago. They said that the bacteria's attack on her chakra system would have been unnoticeable at first, but then she would have begun to feel tired as her energy was sapped. She probably felt weak, her joints would have ached as muscles and tendons became affected, and she would have begun to make mistakes while performing jutsus as her chakra channels began to degrade.

Her immune system, at this point, began to become hyper-responsive in an effort to eliminate the invader. She developed a cough and a runny nose, as though she was experiencing a hyper-allergenic reaction.

In other words, all the initial symptoms were practically identical to those of a cold. Which was probably why Hinata hadn't gone to the doctor – she'd simply told herself that she'd caught Sakura's cold.

It was the next stage that set it apart from cold and flu viruses – the stage at which blood vessels began to weaken and chakra channels started to truly fail. Because blood vessels were so closely linked to chakra channels, the walls of the vessels began to suffer. Small capillaries in the nose – as they were exposed and often irritated by chemicals in the air – broke open, resulting in nose bleeds. And Hinata had passed out because her chakra system was trying to compensate for its loss by sudden increases after particularly large drops, resulting in wild fluctuations that the body simply could not cope with.

The medic who was treating Hinata had fallen ill as well – she'd passed out in the medic's lounge, and while they were trying to revive her they noticed her nose had begun to bleed.

Except Sakura was certain the brown-eyed medic couldn't have caught it from Hinata – she'd only seen the Hyuuga yesterday, and she doubted the disease moved that fast. For that matter, where had Hinata picked up this bacteria?

Sakura sighed, then pushed off the wall, deciding she would have to break the news to Naruto. As she exited the airlock, casting a swift medical sterilization jutsu that purged her skin and clothes of any foreign bodies, she spotted the blonde pacing nervously in front of it, his bouquet of flowers now littering the floor, having been picked to pieces.

"How is she?" he blurted as soon as Sakura stepped out. "Did she wake up yet? Is-"

"She hasn't woken up yet," Sakura interrupted before he could descend into babbling. "But they've figured out what's wrong with her."

And she explained what the medics had told her.

"But they don't know where Hinata picked it up from," she finished. "And while they're pretty certain the medic that treated her didn't catch it from her, they can't find a common link between them yet. For now, the plan is to just keep them isolated to stop them infecting someone else, and hope we learn more when they wake up. If they've eaten at the same restaurant lately or anything like that."

"But she's...she's going to be okay, right?"

Sakura sighed. "I don't know, Naruto. I don't know."

After all, how could they hope to deal with something like this?

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this._


	3. Epidemic

**Chapter Three**

**Epidemic**

"Okay, so what exactly are we trying to do here?" Sakura asked as she donned a lab coat, gloves and protective glasses.

Beside her, Shizune did the same.

"We took blood samples from Hinata and Akina – the medic – and we cultured them, in the hope we might be able to learn a bit more about the bacteria. So far, we've found a dye that turns the bacteria yellow, so in the future if we suspect someone of being infected, all we'll have to do is take a sample of blood and put some of the dye in it. If they're infected, their blood should take on a greenish tinge."

Sakura nodded absently, her eyes on the small petri dishes Shizune held. "Any luck on finding something that'll get rid of them?"

"None so far," the medic admitted. "No antibiotics work, and while some of the scientists have been working on creating a new one specific to this bacteria, so far they've had no luck."

The pink-haired medic glanced into the dishes. A thin film of blood lay on the bottom, but it was the small, white spots that caught her attention: bacterial colonies that had been left to grow in the petri dishes for the last twenty-four hours.

"Have they managed to find anything?" Sakura wondered. "Anything at all?"

"So far, they believe the bacteria may be evolutionarily linked to the types of bugs used by the Aburame clan. Both devour chakra, except the insects are symbiotes rather than parasites as the bacteria are. So they're looking into anything that can somehow disable the insects' ability to feed on chakra, in the hope it might be able to stop the bacteria from feeding on chakra as well."

Sakura nodded. After all, it was only the fact that they were consuming chakra that made the bacteria so dangerous. If they were deprived of it, the medics might be able to treat the infection.

She glanced at Shizune, the harsh fluorescent lighting making the bags beneath the older woman's eyes stand out in stark relief. "Are you okay? No offense intended, but you look like you haven't slept for a week."

"Oh, I've just been busy – you know how it is," Shizune sighed. "I've been run so ragged at the hospital I haven't had time to set foot in the Hokage's office even once!"

Sakura smiled ruefully. "I know what you mean."

She glanced down at the petri dishes, thinking anxiously of Hinata in the isolation room, and hoping that she and Shizune might be able to find something that could help her. She examined the bacteria from every angle, as though intense visual study would somehow magically reveal their secrets to her.

She pondered everything they had learned about them so far, turning the facts over in her head as though they would suddenly click together like a jigsaw puzzle, revealing the solution. They fed on the patient's chakra, making themselves invulnerable to the patient's own immune system, and they were believed to be related to the insects used by the Aburame's clan...

Something clicked in Sakura's head.

"Shizune..." she began quietly, but she was unable to keep the growing excitement from her voice. "Has anyone tried using chakra on the bacteria? I know there's a jutsu that's used in cases of very severe infections – if I remember correctly, it works by saturating the patient's body with the medic's chakra, and the bacteria are weakened..."

"But they feed on chakra," Shizune said. "Just like the..."

When she trailed off, Sakura knew she had the same idea that had just occurred to her.

The Aburame insects were introduced to the clan members at a young age, enabling them to adapt to their user's chakra signature and respond to their commands alone. Sakura knew it was a longshot, but it was possible the bacteria used the same mechanism – they adapted to the chakra of the person they'd infected _only_, not to chakra in general.

Which meant that if the medics performed the necessary jutsu, it might be able to knock the bacteria for a loop, so to speak. Sakura doubted it would be able to kill them outright – somehow, she didn't think a bacteria that was already pumped full of chakra would be able to be eliminated so easily – but it might buy them some time, at the very least.

-xxx-

Sakura formed the handseals slowly and precisely, taking care to ensure there were no mistakes. She'd only learned this jutsu recently, and considering that she was performing it on Hinata, she was taking no chances.

Hinata remained silent as Sakura worked slowly and carefully to flush the Hyuuga's system with chakra. She'd explained the procedure beforehand, so the dark-haired woman understood what was being done and wouldn't become anxious at the feel of foreign chakra invading her body. The reason this jutsu was considered a last resort was because it could only be used when the patient's own chakra was severely weakened, as it would resist such an invasion otherwise.

And to be perfectly honest, Sakura wasn't sure how much of Hinata's silence was consideration for the deep concentration the medic would be sinking into, and how much of it was exhaustion. In the few days since Hinata had sickened, her condition had worsened from a light fever and uncommon nosebleeds to a fairly high temperature and nosebleeds every other minute. Even if she had been allowed visitors in the isolation room, she wouldn't have interacted much – Hinata was tired for the majority of the day, and often all she wanted to do was sleep.

Of course, the taboo on visitors had made for some very unhappy Hyuugas and one very disappointed Naruto. Sakura had found herself ferrying letters back and forth from the airlock to Hinata's room, carrying their messages and Hinata's replies. Of course, she couldn't take Hinata's letters out of the airlock in case they were contaminated, but she could slap it against the glass to allow the person on the other side to read it.

At any other time, she probably would have been offended at acting as a messenger bird, but the distress of Hinata's friends and family at being unable to see her – with Naruto being especially vocal about it – was such that she found herself wanting to help in any way possible.

At last, satisfied that not a single bacteria could have escaped the touch of her chakra, Sakura withdrew.

"That should do it," she told Hinata, brushing a sweat-soaked strand of hair from the woman's face. "Now all that's left is to let your body heal. Try to get some sleep."

"O-okay," Hinata coughed, then lay back in her bed, closing her eyes obediently.

Sakura smiled, then left the room, nearly colliding with Shizune in the hall outside.

"I finished with Akina," the older woman told her. "I'm not sure how much of an effect this treatment will have, given that we can't actually kill the bacteria, but it was a good idea, Sakura."

The pink-haired woman blushed under the praise. It was unfortunate that they couldn't use the chakra-saturating technique to completely eradicate the bacteria, but pouring that much destructive chakra into a sick person's body was going to do them more harm than good. As it was, the gentle saturating technique had to be done with great care to ensure no damage was done to the patient.

"At the very least, it should give their immune system a chance to hit back," Sakura mused, her hands coming up to her mouth to muffle her cough.

"And it will buy us time to work on a cure," Shizune finished.

Sakura turned to share an easy grin...and her smile froze on her face, suddenly feeling as brittle as thin glass.

A drop of bright red blood was oozing from Shizune's nose.

-xxx-

"You know, if you're going to fall asleep on the table, we might as well forget the lunch and get you home to bed," Ino commented as Sakura blinked sleepily at her food but made no move to eat it.

"Sorry, Ino," the medic yawned. "I guess I'm not being very good company, but I've been run ragged at the hospital."

"I think 'run ragged' is describing it kindly," her friend muttered. "I know there's some nasty disease going around, but is it really that bad?"

"Worse," Sakura hissed, and proceeded to explain about the microscopic organisms that were currently wreaking havoc in the isolation wing of the hospital.

"...and now Shizune's sick as well," she finished at last. "And we can't figure out how to cure it. For some reason, while the bacteria adapt to their host's chakra, they can't adapt to anyone else's chakra. If we use the chakra-saturating technique, it sort of stuns them somehow – makes them vulnerable to the patient's immune system for a while, but then the damn things just bounce back again. We can't cure them – all we're doing is stopping them from getting worse."

"Yikes. How come I haven't heard anything about this?"

"Not many people have, even among the medics. Only a very limited number can actually help out with this, as only a very limited number have the chakra control necessary to work on the immune system."

Belatedly, Sakura realised Ino might take offense at her words. She was just so tired her usual mental filters didn't seem to be in place. "Oh...sorry."

Ino shrugged. "I know you're a better medic than me, Sakura. When you start hopping into other people's minds, then I'll get jealous."

The pink-haired woman giggled weakly. Usually, Ino would have taken the bait like a starving trout and started up a playful fight, but the blonde seemed to realise her friend just didn't have the energy for their friendly rivalry today.

"So...are those the only patients so far? Hinata, Shizune, and that Akina woman?"

Sakura shook her head. "A few other ninja have fallen ill, generally ones that were treated by Akina and Shizune in the last few days. At first, we thought it might be sex-linked somehow, as only women seemed to be getting infected, but now we have some male ninja in the isolation wing as well. These bacteria seem to be equal-opportunity, as well as really infectious...and speaking of which, have you had any contact with Hinata in the past week or so?"

"Not that I can think of...why?"

"Oh, Tsunade wants everyone who had contact with any of the patients in the last week to come in and get a blood test. I tell you, it's almost lucky Shizune has been too busy to leave the hospital lately – we wouldn't want Tsunade to have come down with this."

"You came into contact with Hinata in the last week."

"Yeah, but I was performing a jutsu to strengthen my immune system, the same jutsu the medics are performing now to ensure they aren't infected when they enter the isolation wing. Naruto and Sasuke have to get tested, though, as well as Kiba, Shino, Kurenai and most of the Hyuugas."

Sakura's words broke off as a cough erupted from her throat.

"But you're coughing," Ino pointed out. "Have been for a while."

Sakura nodded. "For longer than Hinata, actually. Don't worry, Ino – if I had been infected with these bacteria, one of the other symptoms would have shown up by now. But it's nothing quite so interesting – just a cold."

"That must suck – having a cold while you're trying to work with chakra."

"Tell me about it..." Sakura sniffed, fishing around in her pockets for a handkerchief, finally digging out a square of material and noisily blowing her nose into it.

Ino's keen eyes spotted a very familiar crest on the corner. "Are you using _Sasuke's handkerchief_?"

"Huh?" Sakura glanced down. "Oh, yeah."

"_You're using Sasuke's handkerchief!_" Ino practically screeched, then added slyly, "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Sakura blinked, her tired mind taking an extra moment to make the connection. "Nothing like that, Ino. I was coughing and sneezing, he gave me his handkerchief, and told me to keep it when I asked if he wanted it back. Guess he didn't want one I sneezed on."

But Ino had one of her disturbing grins on her face, the kind that suggested she knew an especially juicy secret.

"What are you smiling about?"

"Absolutely nothing," Ino said, her tone a little too innocent. "Just...are you absolutely certain there's nothing to tell me on that score?"

"Of course I'm sure," Sakura grumped, the topic of conversation making her a little irritable. She was sick, exhausted and miserable – the last thing she needed to do was dwell on unrequited love. "I've noticed Shikamaru hanging around the flower shop lately, so is there something _you're_ not telling _me_?"

Ino's face fell a little, and Sakura instantly felt bad for bringing it up. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay. And no, there's nothing I haven't told you."

Ino's obvious disappointment told Sakura to steer the conversation in other directions, quickly. But before she could, she was cut off by Ino's hacking cough and subsequent sniffle.

"Ino, could you do me a favour and get a blood test after lunch?"

"Why?" the blonde coughed. "I haven't had contact with Hinata or Shizune for a while."

"You're coughing."

"It's just a cold – which I probably caught from you, by the way."

"Ino, the last few days have made me a bit paranoid about anyone who coughs or sneezes, so please...just humour me and get yourself checked out, would you?"

"Alright, alright, will do, will do." Ino waved it away.

Sakura tried to smile, but the movement felt more like a grimace. She hadn't been lying when she told Ino she was being run ragged at the hospital. The chakra saturation jutsu took a lot of energy and concentration, and as the pool of medics who were capable of it was so limited, Sakura had been forced to perform it repeatedly. Add that to the fact that her cold seemed to be worsening (probably because her body wasn't being allowed to get the rest it needed) and Sakura felt ready to drop.

-xxx-

Tsunade eyed the blood swirling around in the vials. The liquid was tinged green, proof of bacterial infection...and yet neither Sasuke nor Naruto showed any visible symptoms.

Neither did Shino, but that at least could be explained. Because his insects were already feeding on his chakra, and because the bacteria were related to the insects, the microorganisms were out-competed. Their preferred habitat was already dominated by the insects, and so the Aburame clan were essentially immune to the bacteria.

So...what was happening with Naruto and Sasuke?

The fact that they had the bacteria in their system meant they would have to be confined to the hospital – they were carriers, in that while they didn't show any symptoms of the disease, they could still infect people. Still, as long as they were healthy and unable to leave the isolation wing, they could help the medics out. There wouldn't be much they could do as neither had any medical experience or training, but it didn't take a genius to fetch and carry.

The blonde allowed herself a small smile at the thought of Sasuke being forced to perform such menial tasks, but then it faded as she considered their situation.

It wasn't good. The infection itself was dangerous, and its spread was beginning to reach epidemic proportions. Now that she knew Naruto and Sasuke were carriers – and had been for who knew how long – anyone who'd had contact with them in the last few days would need to be tested. And if they were all infected too...

Tsunade shook her head, deliberately banishing her increasingly dire thoughts as she called for the chunins who had temporarily replaced Shizune as her assistants.

-xxx-

Sakura knew her smile probably looked diabolical, but she couldn't help it. She was stressed, worried and living in a state of near-constant chakra depletion because she had to perform the chakra-saturating technique so often – she had to take what entertainment she could get.

And the prospect of having both Naruto and Sasuke at her beck and call for the foreseeable future was very entertaining.

"Sakura, you're making that scary face again," Naruto whimpered.

Sasuke said nothing, but his eyes were wary, as though he were looking at a sleeping snake and trying to figure out how to walk past it.

"Your blood samples came back," Sakura told them. "And I'm sorry to say so, but both of you are infected."

Sasuke blinked, and Naruto spluttered, but the medic didn't so much as pause in her speech. "However, you aren't displaying any symptoms. There are some theories floating around as to why, but the one I find most likely is the one that deals with your seals."

"Huh?" Naruto's hand dropped to his stomach, clenching the material of his shirt. Sakura saw Sasuke's hand twitch, as though about to clutch at the mark on his own flesh.

"The chakra-eaters, which is what most of the medics are calling them now, seem to be transferred in some sort of dormant form. When they enter the host's body, they slowly adapt to their chakra, at which point they are able to wreak the kind of havoc we've been seeing. But you two don't have one source of chakra in your body – you have two. Naruto, you have the Kyuubi, and Sasuke, you have the curse seal."

"But I haven't been tapping into the Kyuubi's chakra!"

"It doesn't matter, Naruto – you don't have to actively try to use the fox's chakra for its regenerative capabilities to heal you, right? The principle is the same. Just the presence of a second chakra source is enough to confuse the bacteria. They've never come out of their dormant state, because they can't figure out which chakra to adapt to."

"So...we won't get sick?" Naruto asked cautiously.

Sakura shook her head.

"But we can pass the bacteria to others," Sasuke stated.

"Precisely." Sakura felt her demonic grin return even she as coughed a little. "So both of you are now confined to the hospital until further notice – more specifically, the isolation wing."

Because a steadily increasing number of ninja were succumbing to the chakra-eaters, the individual isolation rooms were no longer a feasible option. Instead, they'd opened the isolation wing – an entire floor which had been designed for outbreaks like these. Because the patients were already infected and weren't going to get any sicker from contact with each other, they were now being placed in huge wards, allowing the medics easy access to their patients without having to rush in and out of individual rooms.

"I wondered why you wanted to meet us here," Naruto admitted, gesturing at the clear airlock behind Sakura, leading to the isolation wing.

"And while you're there, you're going to earn your keep," Sakura continued. "In other words, you two are going to be obeying the medics' every order. And seeing as I've been in charge since Shizune fell ill, that really means you'll be obeying _my_ every order."

Naruto looked a little frightened, as though wondering what she might do. Sasuke just scowled.

Sakura's grin just got wider. She didn't think Naruto had really thought through what his confinement to the isolation wing would mean. Sure he wouldn't be able to leave the hospital for quite a while, but he could now visit a certain someone...

"That being said, let's step in," the medic instructed, opening the airlock and guiding them through.

"Shouldn't you be performing that immune-strengthening jutsu?" Sasuke commented as they stepped into the corridor of the isolation wing.

"I've already performed it this morning, and it lasts the whole day," Sakura answered absently.

Naruto glanced around the hallway – on the other side of the airlock for the first time – and a slowly dawning light in his eyes convinced Sakura he was beginning to realise the advantages of being confined to the isolation wing.

"Naruto," she called, getting his attention. "My first order to you is...go visit Hinata."

"Really?" the blonde brightened so quickly it was like looking at a lightbulb suddenly being switched on. "You don't mind?"

"I think she'd like the company. She's in one of the beds in ward three."

No sooner had she said that than Naruto was off, practically sprinting down the hall.

"Don't run in the hospital!" she called after him, not really surprised when he only slowed his pace a fraction.

Sakura sighed, then turned to Sasuke. "And because you don't have anyone to visit, you're with me."

Sasuke felt a prickle of resentment at the implication that he was her second choice. He knew it was stupid to feel that way; if her options were the perpetually cheery and helpful Naruto and him – the man who'd betrayed them and the rest of Konoha, who never socialised unless forced to – of course Naruto would be her first choice for help with patients.

Sakura's sudden sneezing fit dragged Sasuke from his thoughts, and he watched as she fished in her pockets for a handkerchief or tissue, feeling uncomfortable at his inability to do anything to help her.

But he couldn't deny he felt strangely satisfied when he noticed that the handkerchief she was sniffling miserably into was the one he'd given her.

Sakura noticed the direction of his gaze. "Oh, thanks for this by the way." She waved the cloth a little for emphasis. "I seem to have lost all my other handkerchiefs. Probably stuck them somewhere in the laundry room..."

But that was a lie. Sakura had lost the majority of her handkerchief stash, being a little too busy to keep track of them, but there was at least two others in a drawer at home. But she liked using the one Sasuke had given her.

She allowed herself a little sigh as she folded it up and shoved it in her pocket. _'You're an idiot. A stupid, sentimental idiot.'_

"Anyway, we're going to the laboratory," Sakura informed Sasuke as she set off down the hall once again.

"There's a laboratory?"

"Of course there's a laboratory – how do you think we know so much about the bacteria?" Sakura stepped inside the lab and tossed a lab coat and some gloves at Sasuke. "Put these on."

"Why is it in the isolation wing?" Sasuke grumbled as he buttoned the coat up.

"So if there's an accident and the bacteria somehow get out, they won't spread."

Sakura pulled on her gloves, smirking a little at the satisfying snapping sound they made. She took a small petri dish from the incubator, a dish that contained bacterial cells taken from Naruto's blood sample, frowning when she realised there were no bacterial colonies to be seen. Perhaps they needed to come out of their dormant state before they could grow? And given that Naruto had two sources of chakra, they'd never had a chance to 'wake up', so to speak?

Sakura touched the liquid film over the bottom of the dish with a curious finger, testing its viscosity. A pink lock of hair fell from her shoulder and she jerked her head back with a soft curse before the strands fell in the dish.

"What?" Sasuke asked from behind her, his attention obviously attracted by her curse.

"I need to-" Sakura reached for her hair, then remembered the bacterial spores which were probably covering her gloved finger.

She could always take it off, put her hair up and re-glove, but she was suddenly struck by a better idea. "Hey, Sasuke, can you do me a favour?"

He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised as though inviting her to continue.

"Can you put my hair up for me?"

Sasuke blinked, not certain he'd heard that correctly.

"If I do it, I'll have to re-glove, but you haven't even put yours on," she continued, nodding at his bare hands. "I think there's a hair tie in my pocket."

She made a vague gesture with her elbow at her left hip, and Sasuke resisted the urge to swallow noisily. Was she actually saying she wanted him to...?

"Come on, Sasuke – while we're young!"

With a silent sigh, Sasuke stepped forward until his chest was barely an inch shy of pressing against her back and slid his hand between the buttons of her lab coat. Sasuke tried not to think about the smooth flesh separated from his hand by only a thin strip of material as his fingers found the gentle rise of her left hipbone and he groped for the pocket.

Sakura's breath became a little ragged as Sasuke's fingers wandered over her waist, obviously searching for the pocket. Suddenly, she wished she'd simply pulled her gloves off and put her hair up herself. The tip of Sasuke's index finger found the pocket, and her lungs seemed to cave in as his hand snaked inside, following the curve of the pocket to the seam of her thigh and pelvis.

She knew he was only fishing for her hair tie, but the fact that she could see his forearm disappearing beneath the white lab coat made the whole situation seem...lewd, somehow.

_'Stop it, Sakura,'_ she told herself firmly. _'It's only lewd because your mind is making it lewd. If this were Naruto, you wouldn't think twice about it.'_

Of course, if it were Naruto, he wouldn't be doing it in the taut, tense silence that was suddenly pervading the room – he would have joked about it, and maybe tickled her in the process just for kicks.

Sasuke barely kept himself from sighing in relief when his fingers finally closed around the hair tie. He was beginning to regret his impulsive decision to pull it out like this – if someone came into the lab right now, he could only guess at what they'd think he and Sakura were doing.

But to be perfectly honest he didn't have to guess; he knew what they'd think. After all, he was pressed against her back, his hand very obviously wrapped around her stomach beneath the bulky coat...

Sometimes, Sasuke wondered why the universe seemed to insist on taunting him with what he couldn't have.

Though he wanted to withdraw quickly, his arm seemed to have a mind of its own as it dragged slowly across Sakura's stomach and out into the open air again.

Sasuke told himself he imagined the slight shiver that rippled through her body.

He knew he shouldn't be doing this, but after his previous forebodings, some part of him was determined to enjoy and take advantage of this opportunity now that he had it. He knew it wasn't necessary for him to drag his hand up the curve of her waist and over her arm, but he did it anyway. He knew he didn't have to finger-comb her hair before gently tying the shoulder-length locks back in a scruffy ponytail, but he did it anyway. He knew he didn't have to caress the nape of her neck before he drew back, but he did it anyway.

If the universe was determined to taunt him, then he would indulge in the moments he was offered. If some higher power seemed to enjoy rubbing the fact that Sakura no longer wanted him in his face...then he would at least enjoy this.

Sakura felt as though it would be several minutes before she could move. Her mind was a confused babble of half-formed thoughts and questions. _'Did he just ...he did! Why...he wouldn't really...would he?'_

If Sakura hadn't known better, she would have sworn he was trying to...seduce her.

She could practically feel her heart slamming against her ribs at the prospect.

_'Calm down,'_ she told herself. _'Just calm down. This is Sasuke we're talking about. He wouldn't ever...would he?'_

Sakura was almost grateful when a sudden coughing fit distracted her from her thoughts and broke her from her paralysis.

"Uh...thanks," she said awkwardly, turning around to meet Sasuke's unreadable eyes. In a voice a touch higher than her usual tone, she added, "Now let's...let's get to work."

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this._


	4. Containment

**Chapter 4**

**Containment**

Ino scowled, elbowing her pillow sharply as she tried to make it something approaching comfortable.

She'd gotten the blood test as Sakura suggested, and the results had come back saying she was infected. Within an hour, Ino had found herself in one of the isolation wings, wearing stiff hospital-issue clothes and attempting to soften a pillow that felt like it had been made from gravel instead of feathers.

"I hate this pillow," the blonde muttered.

"You g-get used t-to it after a w-while," Hinata offered tentatively from across the room.

"I don't want to get used to it," Ino groused.

Hinata nodded. She suspected the blonde wasn't truly angry – Ino just needed to do or say something to keep her mind off the fact that she was now infected. The Hyuuga couldn't blame her; it wasn't exactly a pleasant prospect. The idea that there were microscopic bacteria swarming through her body, devouring her chakra...that the medics still didn't know how to cure her and could only prevent her from getting worse...

Hinata shook her head, refusing to dwell on it. She wasn't a medic – there was nothing she could do, so she wouldn't worry about it. She refused to.

Ino yelped when the door to their ward was suddenly thrown open and Naruto practically bounded into the room. "Don't you ever knock!"

"It's a hospital," Naruto said, as though this explained everything, before turning to Hinata. "Hey, Hinata – I said I'd be back, didn't I?"

Hinata giggled at the blonde man's earnest expression. Naruto had visited her yesterday, telling her he had been deemed a carrier of the chakra-eaters and so couldn't leave the isolation wing. He and Sasuke now had to sleep in the on-call rooms and eat in the break room along with the medics who were treating the patients. In an effort to decrease the spread of the outbreak, now even the medics were confined to the isolation wing, in the belief they might carry bacterial spores from the wing on their clothes and infect others.

"You look better today," Naruto remarked, sitting on the edge of her bed. "Are you feeling better?"

"A little," Hinata admitted. "S-since the medics b-began using the s-saturation technique my fever's g-gone down and I d-don't feel so t-tired all the time."

"That's good," Naruto beamed. "I would have been by earlier, but Sakura had me and the bastard running around in the lab for hours. They're trying to make a vaccine for this thing, only Sakura said most vaccines take years to make so we shouldn't expect any miracles."

"So, no plans to halt the spread in the near future," Ino coughed from across the room, sitting back in her bed and giving up on her pillow.

"Well, Granny Tsunade said Kakashi got back today," Naruto said. "Since he's been away from the village for a few weeks they know he isn't infected, so they're getting him to figure out where the infection started from."

Something occurred to Ino in that moment. "Any civilians infected yet?"

Naruto shrugged. "Don't know – ask Sakura. She said she'll be by later."

Ino nodded, and decided she would try to get some sleep. Granted, it might be difficult with Naruto in the room, but she figured there was no harm in trying, and it wasn't like there was anything else to do. Since this was the isolation wing, she couldn't bring in books or games from her home so she could entertain herself.

"Th-thanks for c-coming, Naruto," Hinata stammered, her cheeks beginning to flush. "It g-gets pretty b-boring in here."

"Really? You don't mind that I'm here?"

Ino rolled her eyes behind her lids.

"N-not at all." Hinata sounded nervous. "I l-like talking to you, N-Naruto."

That was unusually bold for Hinata. Thinking that the semi-couple might be on the verge of some sort of resolution, Ino did her very best to feign sleep.

_'I'm deeply asleep, dead to the world, totally oblivious,'_ she chanted silently. _'Don't mind me, continue to dance around your mutual attraction...'_

"Hey, Hinata, you're looking kinda flushed, are you okay?"

Ino resisted the urge to scream in frustration.

"I'm f-fine."

There was a slight sniffle, and Naruto's voice was rather alarmed when he spoke again. "Your nose is bleeding again!"

Ino stiffened, but resisted the urge to open her eyes.

"Do you want tissues? Are there any around?" Naruto babbled.

"There sh-should be some in th-that drawer," Hinata murmured.

Ino heard the distinct sound of a drawer being opened and rifled through before Naruto's voice reached her ears again, loudly declaring that he'd found it.

"Th-thank you." Hinata's voice sounded muffled and thick, and Ino assumed she'd pressed a few tissues to her nose. "It's r-really nothing t-to worry about."

"Yeah..." Naruto sounded as though he were trying to convince himself, but his voice soon strengthened. "You've got nothing to worry about, Hinata. Sakura and the rest of the medics will have you cured in no time!"

No could ever accuse Naruto of being a pessimist.

"And I was wondering..." he went on, suddenly sounding nervous. "I mean, when you're better...and if you're not busy...and if you want to...we could, maybe...go out together sometime?"

Ino had to bite her tongue to keep from squealing. Somehow, even taking into account Hinata's bashfulness, she'd never really expected Naruto to make the first move.

Stunned was probably the only way to describe Hinata's tentative whisper. "Y-you mean it?"

"Well, if you don't want to-"

"N-no! I m-mean yes – I d-do want to go...with y-you."

And now, Ino had to hold her breath until the urge to either shout 'finally' or laugh like a maniac passed. Just wait until she told Sakura!

"You mean it?" Naruto asked eagerly, a perfect echo of Hinata, minus the stuttering. "Really?"

"R-really."

Ino shifted beneath the blanket to disguise a covert wriggle of pure delight.

The moment was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps, and the click of the door being opened.

"Hey, everyone," Sakura's voice rang out, sounding tired.

Ino made a great show of waking up and rolling over in the bed so she could see Sakura and Sasuke standing just inside the door.

"Oh, hey, Forehead," she greeted.

Ino knew her grin was a little too wide for simply greeting a friend, but she was sitting on a particularly juicy piece of information at the moment. She'd probably have to wait to tell Sakura about the advances on the Naruto-Hinata front, but-

"Sakura, Hinata and I are going to go out as soon as she's better!" the blonde man shrieked.

_'Never mind,'_ Ino thought. _'Should have known he'd announce it to the world as soon as he could...'_

Sasuke snorted, but Sakura brightened. "That's great – I'm so happy for you two!"

Sakura refused to think about the possibility that Hinata might not get better – that they might not be able to cure her.

"And speaking of getting better," the medic continued. "I'm going to have to perform the chakra-saturating technique on you, Ino."

"What about Hinata?" Naruto asked indignantly.

"Another medic performed the saturation technique a few hours ago," Sakura interjected before Hinata could speak. "Don't worry – she's not being neglected."

She coughed a little as she made her way to Ino's bedside. "What I'm going to do might feel a little strange, but just try to relax."

The blonde woman saw her friend's green eyes glaze over before she felt the strange warmth of Sakura's chakra enter her system. As the medic had warned, it felt strange – her body instinctively tried to fight the foreign presence – but she did her best to relax, closing her eyes and breathing slowly and evenly as though she were about to go to sleep.

Ino was vaguely aware of Naruto and Hinata chattering – Sasuke wasn't saying anything but she guessed he was still leaning against the door and surveying the room with his usual aloof expression – but her mind was beginning to sink into a pleasant haze. Maybe this was a side-effect of the chakra-saturation technique?

She didn't know how much time passed before Sakura drew away, but when Ino opened her eyes Sasuke was sitting in a chair near the door with his arms folded while Naruto babbled and Hinata smiled at him.

Ino started to sit up and thank Sakura, but a sneezing fit prevented her.

"Ugh," Ino groaned, wiping at the blood leaking from her right nostril.

Sakura passed Ino the infamous Uchiha handkerchief and allowed her to mop at the blood.

"I'm getting blood all over your handkerchief," the blonde muttered.

"Nothing a cold water soak won't fix," Sakura remarked, her tone weary, before brightening once more as the woman tried to inject some energy into her voice. "Anyway, I brought something for you!"

"You did?" Ino blinked in bemusement. "What is it?"

"Apparently Shikamaru and Chouji have heard that you're sick," Sakura said, digging a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "They gave me this note for you. And there's one for Hinata, too," she added. "From Neji – he got back sometime today and he's less than happy to hear that you're sick."

"He can't touch me here!" Naruto proclaimed. "I'm safe!"

"Well, since Neji was around at the time that we think Hinata was infectious, we'll need to test him. If he's been infected, he'll be in the isolation wing, too," Sakura corrected.

Naruto blanched. "But...you'll put him in another ward, right? _Right?_"

Ino snickered, wiping the last of the blood from her face and handing the handkerchief back to Sakura. She had seen enough of the men's respective abilities to know that, if it really came down to it, Naruto could probably beat Neji, but it seemed the blonde didn't relish the prospect of facing the Hyuuga's protective wrath.

Still giggling to herself, Ino unfolded the note Sakura had given her, her eyes recognising Shikamaru's familiar, dragging letters. His loopy, cursive script always made her giggle, because it left her with the impression that even his writing was lazy.

Sakura craned her neck back and forth, wincing as felt her stiff muscles stretch and her vertebrae pop. She smothered a yawn with her hand and checked the time, idly wondering if she could get in a quick nap before she had to rush back to the lab.

The only clock in the room happened to be positioned above Hinata's bed, and that naturally led her eyes to wander to the happy couple occupying said bed. Naruto was sitting on the edge, one hand resting on Hinata's leg beneath the blanket, grinning like a shy schoolboy. Hinata hadn't succumbed to one of the fire-engine blushes that had plagued her as a child, but there was a distinct dusting of pink across her cheeks.

In spite of her exhaustion, Sakura found herself grinning, which soon turned into another yawn.

"Why are you so tired?" Sasuke asked, somehow managing to make it sound like her exhaustion was a personal insult.

"Because I've been pouring chakra into my patients all damn day!" Sakura snapped, the beginnings of a foul temper starting to sour her mood as she realised she wouldn't have time to nap – she was scheduled to perform the chakra-saturation technique on Kiba in ten minutes. "Speaking of which, you and I have another patient to attend to, come on."

"Who?" Ino asked. "Just out of curiosity, I mean."

"Kiba," Sakura explained. "He and Shino were tested a few days ago, and they found that he's been infected."

Naruto and Hinata – already aware of this – did not react to Sakura's statement, still wrapped up in each other.

"Shikamaru and Chouji will probably have to be tested, too, come to think of it," the pink-haired woman mused, before veering back to the original subject of the discussion. "Anyway, since Aburame's have been found to be immune, some of them are being drafted into work here, though I don't think you'll see much of them – they'll probably be in the lab, helping the scientists and medics work on a cure."

Ino nodded, waving a little as Sakura and Sasuke left the room. Then she turned her attention back to her letter.

It was pretty much what she expected – Shikamaru telling her that this disease was 'troublesome' (of course!) and the longer she was sick the more she'd yell at him when she was better, so she should hurry up and recover.

Ino smiled. She could see the deeper message – get well soon – beneath the complaints.

-xxx-

Sakura stifled another yawn as she turned on the cold tap in the break room sink, filling a small plastic bowl with cold water before dropping the bloody handkerchief in it and letting it soak. No one became a ninja without learning a few things about getting blood out of material.

She coughed a little, sniffling wetly, as she left the cloth to soak and yanked down a heavy volume from the bookshelf.

The heavy thud as it hit the table made Sasuke turn around from where he was pouring himself a drink. He glimpsed the title – _When Antibiotics Don't Work: Battling Bacteria With Jutsus_ – before Sakura flipped it open and scanned the contents page.

"I thought jutsus weren't working against them," he said bluntly.

"Never hurts to check," Sakura muttered, flipping to the chapter on super-bugs. "Maybe there's something in here no one's tried yet."

"It's a book in the medics' break room," Sasuke pointed out, with the sort of cold logic that just made Sakura want to hit him on the back of the head. "I'm sure every medic in here has thumbed through it."

"Pessimist," she muttered, flipping the pages. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to give someone encouragement for once."

Her eyes remained riveted to the text, so she didn't see Sasuke's frown.

She clenched her jaw in an effort to stifle another yawn. Sakura had been living in the on-call and break rooms for the past few days, and being in the isolation wing meant she had been up at all hours of the night, alerted by every alarm and roused for every problem. The medic thought she'd gotten about thirteen hours of sleep within the last three days.

_'I should tape a note to my forehead tonight,'_ she mused. _'Do not wake unless someone is dying.'_

Her thoughts were interrupted when Sasuke set a styrofoam cup beside her, filled with steaming coffee. She hadn't even heard him brew it.

For a moment, Sakura blinked at the cup, as though it were an illusion that would disappear if she scrutinized it hard enough. Then she looked up at Sasuke, her eyes asking a silent question.

"You were yawning," he said, not meeting her eyes.

If she didn't know better, she'd say he was embarrassed, but Sakura was more concerned with the fact that the coffee gently steaming beside her was all _hers_.

"You are honestly the most wonderful man I have ever met," she proclaimed, taking a long gulp from the cup, disregarding its scalding temperature in favour of the caffeine boost.

Only when she'd swallowed did she think about what she'd said. She might be in love with Sasuke (regrettably) but she was under no illusions as to his character – he was certainly far removed from the most wonderful man she'd ever met.

"Bearing in mind that I had perhaps five hours of sleep last night, that may be the beginning stages of sleep deprivation psychosis talking," she joked. "Feel free to disregard that comment."

Sasuke made a noncommittal noise and turned away, telling himself her retraction of her statement didn't hurt.

-xxx-

Naruto couldn't stop grinning. Some part of him still couldn't believe Hinata had actually agreed to go out with him.

Sakura had told him to just ask her last night when they and the rest of the medics bunked in the on-call rooms, saying that Hinata wasn't a mean person, and even if she didn't feel the same, she wouldn't think any less of him for it.

Sakura had been saying that for weeks, but last night Naruto had finally realised that he owed it to himself to at least try. After all, he would never give up on his dream to become the Hokage, so why give up on this before it had even started?

So he'd asked...but he'd never really expected she would actually say 'yes'.

Hinata seemed to be dozing a little now, but she hadn't actually told him to leave, so Naruto was staying. She'd apologised for her exhaustion, but Naruto figured if he had a bunch of bacteria swimming through his system and eating his chakra, then he'd probably feel pretty tired too.

On impulse, he leaned forward and gently brushed a few strands of hair from her forehead. Hinata smiled sleepily, and Naruto's silly grin grew wider.

On the other side of the room, scratching out her reply to Shikamaru's letter with pen and paper that Hinata had lent her, Ino tried to smother her laughter.

-xxx-

Shikamaru hated hospitals. There was something about the white walls, the fluorescent lights, and the stale smell of bleach that just set his teeth on edge. He didn't understand how the medics could stand to spend so much of their time in this building.

Of course, his dislike of hospitals may have stemmed from the fact that the only time he was ever in one was when either he or one of his friends were critically injured.

This time, it was Ino. Ino, who was now lying in a hospital bed behind the imposing glass airlock, with bacteria clogging her blood vessels and devouring her chakra like kids in a candy store.

It was strange to think of Ino being sick. The blonde was always so loud, so determined, and had always been such a fixed part of his life that the idea of her being sick...sick enough to be hospitalized...was something his mind just couldn't seem to grasp.

It wasn't in Shikamaru's nature to fidget, but he found himself nervously tapping his foot against the floor as he waited for a reply to the letter he'd given Sakura.

Chouji was silent, save for soft, rhythmic crunching sounds as he ate his chips, until he suddenly went rigid in his seat.

"Chouji?" Shikamaru queried.

"I feel..." Chouji's voice was faint and breathy, as though there wasn't enough oxygen in his lungs. "I think I'm..."

He got no further before the blood drained from his face and he slithered from the chair to the floor, out cold.

"Chouji!" Shikamaru yelled, dropping to his knees and shaking his friend's shoulder, trying to rouse him. "Chouji!"

Shikamaru's voice trailed off as he noticed the drops of blood that had landed on his hand. He wiped his fingers across his upper lip, feeling warm, wet liquid.

His nose was bleeding.

-xxx-

Kakashi and his small team of chunins stared at the blackboard, each hoping that a bolt of inspiration would suddenly fall from the sky like one of Zeus' thunderbolts.

The silver-haired man pondered the rough infection map he'd drawn out on the board. Tsunade had commissioned him to investigate the spread of the chakra-eaters, and while he might not appreciate being suddenly stuck with a bunch of chunins, he could understand the gravity of the situation. If left unchecked, this disease could cripple Konoha.

So, while the scientists and medics worked on finding a cure and keeping the patients stable, Kakashi and the investigative team were working to find the source.

Kakashi's first step had been to draw up an infection map – that is, scrawling the names of everyone who'd been infected on a blackboard and trying to work out how and where they could have caught it.

It had been rather easy at first. Hinata was the first reported case, followed by the medic Akina and Shizune. Kiba, Naruto, Sasuke and the infected Hyuugas had probably sickened as a result of contact with Hinata, and most of the other shinobis had been treated by either Akina or Shizune in the last week or so. Naruto had spent some time in Ino's flower shop when Hinata first fell ill, so the blonde woman had probably caught the bacteria from him.

Kakashi thought it could be safely assumed that Akina, Shizune, and Hinata were the original carriers of the disease. The only problem was that he couldn't figure out where they had caught it from. If it was just Akina and Shizune, they could assume it was something in the hospital and have every inch of the building and materials therein tested...but Hinata, too?

Kakashi and his team had checked. The three women hadn't eaten in the same restaurants, hadn't bought the same food...they hadn't even trained in the same place!

So what did they have in common? Where had they caught it from?

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this._


	5. Spread

**Chapter 5**

**Spread**

Sakura sighed fatalistically, eyeing the green-tinged blood samples.

Anyone who'd had contact with Ino, Naruto, Sasuke, Shikamaru, or Chouji had come in to be tested – Neji, Lee, and a couple of other shinobi Sakura vaguely recognised from past missions.

All had been infected...except Lee.

Sakura couldn't help but wonder how Lee had escaped unscathed, but that was a problem for Kakashi to solve – her overtaxed and overtired mind was already too busy working on a cure.

The medic put the vials down, reaching into her pocket for her schedule for the day – she had a feeling she was meant to be performing the chakra-saturation technique on someone in ten minutes or so...

Sakura was proven correct when she saw Tenten's name scrawled in her eleven o'clock session.

She smiled a little as she remembered Neji's reaction to the news that he'd been infected – it had been as close to outright panic as she'd ever seen the Hyuuga. But not for himself; he had been terrified for Tenten.

Apparently, they'd had some rather intimate contact the very night he'd returned, and she had then been sent on a mission. So Neji had been thinking of his lover going into a dangerous situation while unknowingly infected with chakra-devouring bacteria – Sakura could certainly see why that had worried him.

Tenten had been recalled via messenger bird, and subsequent tests had found the bacteria only barely beginning to 'awaken'. Thus far, Tenten's infection was the earliest they'd ever diagnosed the disease at, and there was hope that continual chakra-saturation might be able to provide her immune system with enough support to completely subsume the bacteria. And if they cured Tenten...maybe they could work out how to cure everyone else.

Granted, it was rather a long shot, but it was about the only hope they had.

The disease's spread had become so alarming that many of the medics had insisted on posting notices around the village – posters that would describe the early symptoms and urge anyone suffering from them to go to the hospital. They'd resisted such a course of action initially because once they posted notices, they were bound to get a sudden influx of hypochondriacs who did nothing but complain and waste the medics' time. But by now, they'd decided that it was better to have the people panicking than to have many wandering around completely unaware that they were sick.

Another sigh, and Sakura set off for ward two.

-xxx-

"Nice of you guys to come see me," Ino smirked.

"It's not funny," Chouji groused, dabbing at his bleeding nose with a tissue.

Ino shrugged. "It's either laugh about it or cry about it, and I know which one I prefer."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and settled back into his pillows.

"Bet this is your dream come, huh, Shikamaru?" Naruto called from across the room where he was sitting on Hinata's bed. "All you have to do is lie back and do nothing, all day, every day!"

"No clouds," he deadpanned, feeling absurdly pleased when he heard Ino giggle.

"Don't you remember, Naruto?" Ino scolded. "Clouds are the love of Shikamaru's life!"

And how often had she reflected on how much time he spent cloud-watching and then felt like an idiot because she was jealous of what amounted to nothing but tiny droplets of water?

"I wouldn't say they're the only love of his life," Chouji muttered under his breath, too low for anyone to hear.

"Just like ramen is the love of Naruto's life," Shikamaru drawled, before flicking his eyes towards the Hyuuga on the bed. "Though those noodles might find themselves in competition..."

Naruto and Hinata both smiled. Naruto's was a broad, bold grin, and Hinata's was a soft, almost timid tilt of the lips, but looking at them there...Ino couldn't help but think that the emotions behind their grins were exactly the same.

-xxx-

Sakura sent one final surge of chakra into her friend's system before withdrawing. "There. That should hold you for a while."

Tenten blinked slowly, trying not to yawn. "I feel...kinda drowsy. Is that meant to happen?"

"Chakra-saturation can do that," Sakura nodded, struggling not to yawn herself. She hadn't drained her chakra, but constant heavy use with no chance to rest and recover was beginning to take its toll.

She coughed a little, digging out a handkerchief as she felt a sneeze building.

"Is that Sasuke's handkerchief?" Tenten asked as Sakura blew her nose.

The medic rolled her eyes. This again?

_'You'd think he'd given me an engagement ring,'_ she thought.

"Yes, it's Sasuke's handkerchief. He gave it to me a while back."

Tenten's eyes widened. "Just like that?"

"Yes, just like that." Sakura stood slowly, her body feeling as though every drop of energy had been wrung out of it. "Try to get some rest, okay? The bacteria will be going into a dormant state for a while, so let your body heal."

Tenten nodded vaguely, lying back in her bed obediently.

"Will there be any permanent damage?" Neji asked from the bed next to Tenten's, sounding as though he was doing his best not to contemplate that prospect.

Sakura couldn't blame him. His family's fighting style depended entirely upon chakra, and the idea that this infection might result in permanent damage, that it might cripple his ninja abilities...Sakura could only imagine how horrifying that idea would be.

"There's no reason to think so," she explained. "Chakra channels are different from blood vessels and tendons and the like. While they can be blocked or damaged, they are basically streams of energy, so they'll always recover."

At least, as long as the patient was alive, but Sakura refused to address that dark shadow of doubt. She knew many people wondered why the medics were expending so much effort to keep the bacteria in check at this stage of the illness, even though the symptoms at this point were relatively harmless.

In fact, it was _because_ the symptoms were rather harmless that they were putting so much effort into not letting anyone's infection progress beyond this stage. Sakura couldn't know with any certainty what the next stage would be like, but she knew the relentless attack on the chakra channels would eventually cause the organs to fail. Far better to exert some effort now to keep them in an incapacitated state rather than let them to progress to a life-threatening one.

Stepping out into the corridor, Sakura ran straight into Sasuke. Literally. Her nose hit his sternum and she rebounded with a pained yelp.

"Are you okay?" she heard Sasuke ask, with more gentleness in his voice than she would have thought him capable of expressing.

"I'm fine," she said, tipping her head back to look at his face. Sometimes, Sakura really hated how far her teammate's growth spurt had left her behind.

"You're too damn tall," she muttered.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'll work on that," he said, his voice practically drowning in sarcasm.

Sakura was struck by the sudden, irrational urge to stick her tongue out at him. The sleep deprivation was really starting to fry her brain.

"I just finished using the chakra-saturation on Tenten," she informed him. "And I explained to Neji that this infection won't cause permanent damage. Did you know they asked to placed in the same ward? It's kinda sweet – who would have known that Mr. Stern and Serious Neji could have such a soft side..."

Sasuke wondered if she knew she was babbling. Sakura seemed to realise the same thing, because she suddenly closed her mouth and looked faintly puzzled, as though she wondered why she'd verbalised her thoughts.

Sasuke wondered how much sleep she was getting. Sakura's bed in the on-call room had been empty when he fell asleep last night, and it had been empty when he awoke.

"Come on, I have to check on Shikamaru," she said, making her way towards ward three. "And Ino, too, but you can probably do that – just check her temperature, take her pulse, that sort of thing."

Sasuke nodded, taking the thermometer Sakura snatched from the nurse's station as they passed it.

Sakura opened the door, stepping into the ward and trying to smile. She felt practically dead on her feet – it was a good thing she didn't have to perform the chakra-saturation technique again today. All she had were some basic check-ups to ensure the patients weren't worsening.

"Take deep, even breaths, please," she instructed Shikamaru as she pressed a stethoscope to his back.

"Open your mouth," she heard Sasuke order harshly from across the room.

Ino scowled. "You have absolutely no bedside manner."

Sasuke's expression told her he couldn't care less what sort of bedside manner he had.

"You used to like it, Ino, remember?" Chouji called, but keeping his voice low so he didn't wake the sleeping Hinata.

Shikamaru stiffened.

"Yeah, well I was an idiot," the blonde muttered, resisting the urge to slide her eyes in Shikamaru's direction.

Sakura heard Shikamaru's heartbeat suddenly quicken through the stethoscope, and tried not to grin. On impulse, she carefully leaned around his back until she could see part of his face.

It was hard to tell from her vantage point, but he looked...pleased.

"And to think Sakura's been forced to work with you," Ino continued. "I don't know how she puts up with you."

Sasuke's scowl deepened, but Ino was surprised by a flash of...something...in his eyes, as though her words had stung him somehow.

"I'm too tired to strangle him," Sakura quipped with a tired laugh.

It was then that Ino noticed the bags under her friend's eyes, the way her movements seemed just a fraction slower than usual. She knew Sakura was working hard, but it looked like she'd barely gotten any sleep in days. The blonde wondered how much of that was her cold and how much of it was chakra depletion.

Ino only half-listened to Sasuke's terse instructions, obeying them mechanically as she watched Sakura complete Shikamaru's check-up with the look of a woman who was half-asleep.

"Are you okay?" she asked as Sakura and Sasuke headed to the door.

The pink-haired medic smiled reassuringly. "I'm fine. Just kinda wiped...it's been a tiring couple of days, you know?"

Ino wasn't convinced, but nodded slowly anyway.

Sakura waved to her friend and strode through the door, Sasuke at her heels. When they were in the corridor, she made a beeline for the break room and practically fell into the couch sitting against the back wall.

Sasuke sat down beside her, but Sakura was so exhausted she barely registered his presence. Her mind felt like it was swimming in syrup – her thoughts began to disconnect from each other, her brain gradually winding down...

Sasuke was half-expecting Sakura to say something, and he nearly jumped when he suddenly felt her list against him.

The Uchiha glanced at the medic, wondering how exhausted she really was if she'd dropped off to sleep within barely a minute of sitting down.

She mumbled something in her sleep, shifting against him. Sasuke thought it sounded like 'don't want any more ramen', but he could be mistaken.

His shoulder probably wasn't the most comfortable pillow for her, and with that in mind Sasuke began to shift slowly away from her, down the length of the couch. He caught her shoulder as she began to slip down, cradling her to keep her from lurching to the side as he slid away, and it was a mark of how tired she was that the movement didn't wake her.

Slowly, carefully, he lowered Sakura to a reclining position on her side, her head pillowed on his thigh. She mumbled and shifted a little, but other than that, the movement didn't disturb her.

Sasuke brushed his hands though her hair idly, stroking the pastel strands, his fingertips brushing the bruise-like half-moons under her eyes, the hollow cheeks...she'd lost weight since the disease first began to spread.

Sasuke found himself hoping that a cure was found soon, before Sakura burned herself out trying to keep her friends from succumbing to it.

-xxx-

"Hinata, Kiba, Ino, Shikamaru, Chouji, Neji, Tenten...but not Lee," Kakashi muttered to himself, as though saying it aloud would somehow force the facts to make some kind of sense. "Why not Lee? What was different about him? What did he do...?"

A dangerous theory slowly uncurled in Kakashi's mind. Lee couldn't perform ninjutsu or genjutsu – his chakra channels were malformed. Civilians – who never learned how to access their chakra – weren't becoming sick, either. Kakashi could name a dozen opportunities for the infected shinobi to pass the bacteria on to civilians...but it hadn't happened.

Offhand, the copy-ninja could think of only one explanation that made sense.

The chakra-eaters were probably attracted to powerful sources of chakra – the kind of aura emitted by ninja, not civilians. Lee's chakra signature, while definitely not as weak as a civilian, was probably still not strong enough to be recognised as a potential food source by the bacteria.

But if that were true...then it meant that the bacteria were specifically designed to attack ninja. And Kakashi knew enough about the animal kingdom to know that this sort of specialization didn't evolve on its own – the Aburame clan had selectively bred certain species of insects for generations before their creatures could feed on chakra and obey them as they did today. So, someone must have done the same to this bacteria.

Someone had quite deliberately created a bioweapon – a disease that could wipe out the ninja population of a hidden village while keeping the civilians alive.

And Kakashi knew that a bioweapon like this did not just 'get out'. The infection's spread through Konoha could be nothing short of deliberate, engineered by one of Leaf's enemies.

This was an act of war.

But by who? Akatsuki had been sighted in Wave, Wind and Earth, but there'd been no sightings near Konoha for some time, so it was unlikely a few members of the missing-nin organisation had somehow managed to infect Konoha's ninja population. Their relations with Earth and Sound left something to be desired, but seeing as Sound had been in pieces since Orochimaru's demise – and the design and execution of this bioweapon called for at least some level of organisation – Kakashi thought they could assume it came from Earth or one of Earth's allies.

They'd send a warning to Suna as soon as possible – let them know they were dealing with a bioweapon. Suna had good investigators and intelligence – maybe they'd heard something about this.

And maybe once they'd figured out who was hitting them with a bioweapon, they could figure out how it was spreading.

-xxx-

Sakura scrubbed at her eyes, wondering why her chakra had given out on her so early into the session. She'd barely been ten minutes into the chakra-saturation session before she'd felt herself approaching dangerously low levels of chakra depletion.

She'd been forced to terminate the session, and now one of the other overworked immune medics was being forced to pick up her slack.

She hadn't realised she was being run quite so ragged, but even taking into account her lack of sleep, her ceaseless labour...she should still have had more chakra than this.

A cough rose in her throat, and Sakura immediately knew the problem. Of course – her cold. Her body was so busy trying to fight the virus that it couldn't regenerate her chakra.

Musing on the fact that she should really try to get more sleep – though that wouldn't be a hardship, considering how little she was getting now – Sakura made her way to the break room, yawning all the way.

She nearly collided with Naruto in the hallway as he emerged from said room.

"Oh, hey, Sakura! How's everything going?"

Sakura took him in – wide-awake, clear-eyed, cheerful...almost perky...

"I hate you," she muttered.

"Someone's just bitter she didn't get her coffee this morning," Naruto said, patting her on the head like she was a precocious child.

She swatted half-heartedly at his hand. "And what's gotten you so cheerful this morning?"

"The scientists think they might have found a cure!" Naruto declared, getting Sakura's attention immediately.

"Really? That's amazing!"

"Well, they didn't really say they had it, they just said they might be on the road to finding one," Naruto amended. "But that's good, isn't it? They were studying my blood 'cause they wanted to find a way to make the bacteria dormant all the time, and they don't like having Sasuke in the lab because he always snarls at them, and they're trying to find the mechanism that makes the bacteria come out of the dormant state. They say that if they find that, they might be able to find out how to make them become dormant again!"

Sakura smiled at the prospect. "That sounds great, Naruto. So, where are you off to now – seeing Hinata, I hope?"

The blonde gave a shy grin and blushed a little. And that was enough for Sakura to send him on his way with a laugh and a sisterly pat on the shoulder.

Sakura had honestly intended to rest, but when she saw the scroll sitting on the table, she couldn't resist.

She had been searching for more information on immune jutsus, hoping to come across something more effective than the chakra-saturation technique, though she'd be happy just to find something less draining. She'd remembered a scroll in Tsunade's library that she'd been reading – one that dealt with lesser known immune jutsus and some forbidden ones – so she'd requested that it be delivered to the isolation wing.

Sakura hefted the substantial scroll and sat down the couch, preparing to do some hard studying.

-xxx-

Tenten did her very best not to burst into laughter. Somehow, she didn't think it would help Neji's temper.

"_No, I do not need your help to get to the bathroom!_" he snarled at the brunette medic who had timidly asked him if he required assistance when she watched him struggle towards the door that led to the tiny shower and toilet attached to ward two.

Tenten heard a sound that she identified as Kiba also stifling his laughter. The sight of Hyuuga Neji on the verge of throwing a tantrum like a toddler was certainly an amusing sight.

But Tenten knew he was feeling out of his element here. Neji was sick, confined to an isolation ward in a hospital, and none of his famous and powerful techniques could beat this enemy. They were totally dependent on the medics for support and a cure.

It had to be unsettling for a man who'd relied on his own strength for most of his life.

It was when she heard the shower being turned on full-blast that Tenten really knew Neji was close to snapping. He only turned the water on that hard when he was really furious.

Kiba choked when she slipped out of her bed and made her way to the bathroom door. "Er...you two aren't going to...are you? Because if you are, I'm not going to play lookout for you – you're on your own if some medic comes in and wants to clean the bathroom or something..."

Tenten rolled her eyes. "Get your mind out of the gutter – we're sick and in a hospital, for heaven's sake! Do you really think we'll be snatching a quickie in the shower?"

"Well...you never know..."

Another exasperated roll of the eyes and Tenten entered the bathroom, the place already beginning to fill with steam.

"_Who's that?_" Neji snapped, though his hoarse cough took much of the impact from his tone.

"It's me," she answered, leaning against the tiny sink.

She watched the outline of her lover through the frosted glass, smiling a little when she saw his tense shoulders relax.

"You feeling okay?" she asked.

"I don't need you babying me, too!" he practically growled.

Tenten sighed. Considering what they were going through (and he was much sicker than her), she was willing to cut him some slack. But there was only so much of his bad temper she'd take.

"I'm not asking as a nurse or medic – which is good, seeing as I'm neither of those...I'm asking as your girlfriend."

There was a pause, and when Neji's reply came, his tone was close to apologetic. "I hate being sick."

"I know," Tenten said. "And you probably feel worse than me, considering that your infection's progressed a lot farther than mine."

Another pause, and then Neji spoke again, in what was undeniably an invitation, "Do you want to take a shower, too?"

"That sounds nice," Tenten mused, fighting the urge to grin like an idiot.

She knew there wouldn't be any sex involved – they were both too ill and exhausted to even consider it – but the prospect of a hot shower and a few deep, involved kisses was appealing in and of itself.

So Tenten shed her clothes and opened the glass door, stepping into both the water and Neji's arms.

-xxx-

Two hours into her reading, only one jutsu had caught Sakura's eye.

It was a forbidden jutsu (just her luck), but it was the principle behind it that intrigued her. If performed successfully, it rendered the subject entirely immune to whatever disease was afflicting them...but at the price of their immune system being unable to recognise any other invader.

In other words, they'd be cured of the disease...but then they could die from the common cold or something equally inconsequential.

But if she could alter it somehow...

Sakura knew she should probably wait until her cold got better before attempting it, but in the meantime, it couldn't hurt to pour over the finer details of the jutsu and see if her hypothesis had any solid basis.

She knew she needed to, effectively, figure out a way to let the patients receive the benefits of the jutsu with none of its drawbacks. She didn't see any way to achieve that – that just wasn't how these things worked – but if she limited the effect of the jutsu...somehow made it so only a small part of the immune system – only a few thousand cells, maybe – were affected, then that would work. Instead of all the cells becoming suddenly immune to one thing and vulnerable to everything else, only a small portion would. That small part would be able to deal with the chakra-eaters, and the rest would still be able to deal with any other diseases.

Of course, even assuming she found a way to limit the jutsu, it would take near superhuman chakra control to pull it off.

Then again, she wasn't Tsunade's apprentice for nothing.

But when her stomach began cramping, Sakura knew it was time for a break. Funny – she could have sworn it hadn't been _that_ long since she'd eaten something...

Sasuke entered the break room to find a tousle-haired, bleary-eyed Sakura digging in the fridge.

"You look horrible."

Sasuke only realised how insulting he sounded when Sakura raised her head and glared at him, her bloodshot eyes lending a surprisingly ferocious edge to it.

"Don't start with me, Sasuke. I may be too exhausted to pound you into the ground, but I have access to a lot of nasty poisons," she threatened, before sneezing loudly.

"I just meant that you should get some rest," Sasuke clarified, making Sakura feel a little guilty for being so curt with him.

Just a little, though – she was feeling too miserable to feel overly guilty.

She was about to reply when she felt her chest tightening, and she only had time to cover her mouth before a sudden coughing fit descended on her.

She thought it would stop soon, but her coughing went on and on, and Sakura hunched over as her chest burned. Liquid rose in the back of her throat, and she tasted iron on her tongue. She heaved a gurgling breath, hacked wetly...and she felt moisture land on her hand.

Finally breathing a little easier – but feeling slightly dizzy – Sakura drew her palm away from her mouth.

To find it covered in blood.

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for cleaning up this chapter!_


	6. Patient Zero

**Chapter 6**

**Patient Zero**

Sakura drew her hand back from her mouth, and Sasuke could practically feel his heart stop as he saw the blood staining her palm. Fear and realisation flashed across her eyes for a brief moment before they fluttered closed as her body went slack and she fell forward in a dead faint.

Sasuke did not scream. He yelled in frustration, he shrieked in fury, but he did not scream. Screaming implied terror. He hadn't screamed since he was eight years old and he returned from shuriken training to find himself an orphan.

So when Sakura's eyes rolled back and she fell forward, Sasuke would never admit that it was a scream that left his mouth when he caught her.

He would say he was just yelling...rather more desperately than usual.

Sakura was a pale, boneless waif in his arms, blood dripping from her nose even as it bubbled from her lips. Her chest convulsed as she coughed weakly, a fine spray of crimson droplets hitting his cheek.

The door to the break room was flung open, slamming against the wall behind it with such force the plaster cracked as Naruto sped into the room.

Sasuke heard him talking like a low buzz in his ears, saw him as a blurred image at the edge of his vision, like a clumsy photograph of something that was moving a bit too fast.

It was like the entire world was moving away from him, his focus narrowing to one thing and one thing alone – Sakura. While he felt strangely removed from everything else, every little detail about her had suddenly become frighteningly, unnaturally clear.

He could feel every shudder wracking her slim body, every hitch in her breath. He could see every hair in the tangles of strands that spilled against his chest, most pink, but some red and some blonde. He could hear each soft, gurgling inhalation and each wet exhalation.

He could feel every drop of her blood as it slid down and dried on his cheek.

Sasuke knew he should do something – help her, get a medic – something besides just standing there with her lying limp in his arms. But he couldn't do anything. His lungs felt as though they were filled with hot lead, and his limbs might as well have been carved from a block of ice – they were cold and numb and uncooperative.

He didn't even realise the medics had entered the room, but he noticed them when they started to pull Sakura from his grasp. Reacting on instinct, Sasuke lashed out, sending one of the ninjas sprawling backwards.

His wrist – of the arm that wasn't supporting Sakura against him – was suddenly caught in a grip more solid than stone. Sasuke jerked his head around, the sudden, dizzying influx of adrenaline causing his Sharingan to activate on reflex...

But his bloodline ability slowly cooled as he stared into bright, burning blue eyes that seemed on the verge of tears.

Sasuke didn't hear any clear, coherent word of what Naruto said to him, but the sight of the blonde – looking as worried and desperate and helpless as Sasuke felt – seemed to restore some fragment of his shattered composure. He loosened his grip on Sakura, allowing the medics to slide her from his arms and onto a stretcher.

Just because he knew they would help her didn't make letting her go any easier.

-xxx-

Tsunade thinned her lips as she ran her eyes over the notes she'd taken during her examination of Sakura. When she'd learned of her apprentice's collapse, she'd insisted on entering the isolation wing to examine her.

What she'd found...wasn't good.

She didn't know how the others were going to take the news, but Sakura had been insistent that they know. And she couldn't sugarcoat it – they had to know exactly how serious this was.

She'd told Sasuke and Naruto to wait in the ward, and so she wasn't surprised when she walked in to see the blonde sitting nervously on Hinata's bed and Sasuke leaning against the far wall, arms folded over his chest, his face blank.

At first glance, he looked completely unaffected by Sakura's collapse...until she realised that his eyes were unfocused and he was blinking a little too often, like someone in shock. There was a small spatter of brown across his cheek – he hadn't even had the presence of mind to wash Sakura's blood away.

As soon as Tsunade entered the ward, she was inundated by worried cries and shouted inquiries about her student's health. She raised a hand for silence, and something in her face must have convinced them to subside, because even Naruto fell silent.

"Sakura has been infected by the chakra-eaters," she said simply.

"Wha...?" Ino gaped. "_How?_"

"No way!" Naruto shrieked.

"_Silence!_" Tsunade snarled, before continuing. "Sakura is infected...and it appears she has been so for some time. We never realised it because she was performing the immune enhancing jutsu, which worked to constantly rally her failing immune system until..."

The Hokage sighed, then said bluntly, "Sakura's immune system has shut down, and now she is beginning to manifest other symptoms, which have progressed far past the stage the rest of you are being kept at."

She gave them a moment to process that, then went on, "As we've seen, her blood vessels are weakening, except the degradation isn't limited to her nose – any capillaries that are irritated are breaking open. She is bleeding in her lungs, her gums, and even the lining of her digestive tract."

Naruto's eyes were huge in his face, and Ino swallowed audibly.

"Because her immune system has been so severely compromised, she's being kept in one of the sterile rooms," Tsunade finished. "She regained consciousness about ten minutes ago, and asked that the rest of you be informed of her condition."

"Can...can we see her?" Naruto asked timidly.

"Yes, but you'll have to go through a sterilisation process first," Tsunade told him. "And Sasuke...wash your face, won't you?"

The Uchiha blinked, then touched the side of his face, surprised by the crisp, flaky texture under his fingers. Then he remembered Sakura lying limp in his arms, coughing blood, feeling his cheek becoming damp...

Though Sasuke had seen far more gruesome sights, the idea that he had Sakura's blood on his face made his stomach lurch. He strode rapidly from the ward and towards the bathroom, suddenly unable to stand the feel of it on his skin.

"I'll be back soon, okay, Hinata?" Naruto said, practically jumping up and down on the spot, he was so anxious.

The Hyuuga nodded as the blonde slipped out, her fingers fiddling nervously with the edge of her blanket.

The ward was strangely silent when Naruto left. Ino was staring fixedly down at her blanket, and Shikamaru and Chouji looked as though they didn't know what to say.

The idea of Sakura being infected seemed somehow unreal. It was probably because they hadn't witnessed anything to do with it – as far as they knew, Sakura had come in to check on Shikamaru, apparently cheerful and healthy...and then, the next thing they knew, she was down in one of the sterile rooms, and Tsunade was telling them the infection had progressed so far she was in serious danger.

And more than that, the idea of one of the medics who had been treating them for weeks succumbing to the disease seemed...ludicrous, somehow. As though it was just some sort of big cosmic joke.

"She'll be okay," Ino said, sounding as though she were doing her best to convince herself. "I mean, this is Sakura – she defeated one of the Akatsuki! She isn't going to be taken down by some stupid little disease!"

Chouji looked away, apparently declining to comment. Hinata bit her lip as she considered what she could possibly say to make Ino feel better.

But one person seemed to realise that nothing they could say would reassure Ino. Hinata watched from beneath her lashes as Shikamaru pushed his blanket to the end of his mattress, swung his legs over the side of the bed and – with perfect calm and control – padded barefoot over to Ino.

The blonde didn't look up, but spoke as though she were looking into his face. "She'll be okay..."

It was more question than statement.

"She'll be okay..." Ino repeated as Shikamaru carefully slid an arm around her shoulders. "She'll be okay..."

Hinata's teeth dug deeper into her lip. Sakura was coughing blood. Her immune system was so weak that a mild cold could kill her. Hinata knew that was about as far from 'okay' as you could get.

And she realised that Ino knew that too.

"This is Sakura, right? She could probably heal herself if it comes down to it..." The blonde sounded rather like a battered woman trying to convince herself her husband didn't mean it, and wouldn't do it again. It was a lie she wanted to believe so badly it was painful.

Shikamaru never said a word...but he didn't let go of Ino, either.

-xxx-

Sasuke – his face still damp from being cleaned – strode down to the sterile room, located at the very end of the isolation wing. These rooms were used only when patients had severely compromised immune systems, to the extent that even the common cold could kill them.

This was the kind of room Sakura was being treated in now.

The thought lodged a chill sliver of ice in Sasuke's spine as he dully went through the procedure that had to be performed before entering a sterile room. The shower, exchanging his clothes for stiff, sterile hospital scrubs, the mask and gloves, the airlock...

It seemed strange that this wasn't to prevent Sakura infecting him, but to prevent him infecting Sakura.

Even now, over half an hour after Sakura had first collapsed in his arms, Sasuke's mind still felt as though it were frozen in ice – still, unmoving, unable to get past the point it had first stalled on.

Sakura was infected.

Sakura had been infected...and she'd kept working, kept performing draining jutsus, kept pushing her body to the edge. The immune enhancing jutsu had held the outward symptoms in check for a while, so the disease had progressed without anyone noticing, as silent and undetected as a skilled assassin. She had been constantly rallying her failing immune system, until it shut down and her entire body rebelled.

Sasuke didn't claim to be a medic, but he knew a bad diagnosis when he heard it. It had been written in Tsunade's eyes, in the tilt of her mouth, in the too-rigid set of her shoulders.

Sasuke shook his head and stepped into Sakura's room.

The green-eyed woman was sitting propped against her pillows, looking shockingly small and vulnerable in the hospital gown. Her skin seemed unnaturally pale, the blue veins standing out as clearly as cerulean ribbons.

A figure sitting beside her that could vaguely be recognised as Naruto under the scrubs and mask tapped Sakura on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of the door. Sakura glanced at Sasuke...and suddenly broke out into giggles.

Of all the reactions Sasuke had been expecting, that was not one of them.

"You two look so funny," Sakura laughed. "I can barely tell who you are underneath all that!"

Her giggles soon turned into a hacking cough, and she snatched one of the tissues from the nightstand just in time to spit some blood into it.

She crumpled the tissue and tossed into a small bin nearby, and Sasuke's stomach twisted when he spotted the wads of red-tinged tissues already resting there.

"Naruto said Tsunade already told you everything," he could hear Sakura saying, but Sasuke's eyes were riveted on the blood-stains in the bin. Tsunade's voice echoed in his mind like a broken record.

_Bleeding in her lungs, her gums, and even the lining of her digestive tract..._

His fist clenched sharply, pulling his mind away from the dark spiral it had been about to descend into.

"So you're really...bleeding like she said?" Naruto asked quietly.

Sakura nodded. "Yeah. But it's not a lot of constant bleeding, so they don't have to use a drain or anything – I'll probably cough most of it up."

Sasuke didn't find that reassuring in the slightest.

"It could be worse," Sakura reflected. "The capillaries in my eyes could be bleeding – that would be messy."

Naruto looked vaguely disgusted by the mental image.

"Anyway, don't hover at the door, Sasuke, come sit down!" Sakura instructed, patting the side of the bed opposite Naruto. Considering that these were sterile rooms, they weren't equipped with chairs for visitors.

Feeling uncomfortable, Sasuke sat on the very edge of the mattress. He watched Naruto and Sakura chat with utter bemusement – it seemed that after their brief and rather evasive mention of Sakura's infection, they were now both making an effort to pretend it didn't exist. As though Sakura wasn't lying in a hospital bed with a potentially fatal disease working its way through her body.

Sasuke simply couldn't understand how they could block out something like that. He couldn't think of anything else. Sakura smiled at Naruto, and all he could see was the faint, pinkish tinges between her teeth, the remnants of the blood she'd coughed up. She patted the blonde on the head and all he could think of was the fact that bacteria were teeming beneath her sickly-pale skin, devouring her chakra, eating away at her life.

"What are you doing?" His voice was low, trembling at the edges – a flimsy clay wall trying to hold back a flood it had no hope of stopping.

Sakura blinked. Seeming to sense he was close to some sort of eruption, she spoke gently, cautiously, "I'm telling Naruto about the time I-"

"You're sick!" Sasuke snapped. "Didn't you pay attention when Tsunade told you? You shouldn't be chatting, you should be getting treated or treating yourself or something! Don't you know how severe this is?"

Sakura's face darkened, her lips thinned, and Sasuke wondered – not for the first time – why everything he said seemed to upset her.

"I know what's going on, Sasuke," she said, her voice low and intent, as sure and purposeful as a knife thrown from the shadows. "In fact, I know what's going on probably better than you do. Would you like to hear? I've been infected with the chakra-eaters, probably within the first week or so of their spread, come to think of it. Guess I should have gotten tested but, well, you know what they say about hindsight."

With a short, self-deprecating snort, Sakura went on, "The disease has progressed far beyond the stage the others are being kept at. My chakra is dropping to dangerously low levels. My immune system is non-existent. I'm sniffling because my nose is bleeding, I'm coughing because my lungs are bleeding, and my stomach's cramping because it's bleeding, too!"

Naruto tried to interrupt, but Sakura overran his stumbling attempts like a galloping horse stomping on a field mouse. "They've performed the chakra saturation technique on me, but that's going to do very little. The bacteria have become dormant, yeah, but my immune system won't attack them, so I'm not going to have any chance to heal. Eventually, my chakra channels are going to degrade to the point where my organs start to fail, at which point I'll die, though I'll probably slip into a coma beforehand."

It was beyond Sasuke how Sakura could state the possibility of her death so baldly. But her voice was flat and toneless, and her eyes were two chips of emerald ice, reflecting nothing.

"At the moment, the medics' best hope is to simply keep me alive until the scientists can discover a cure. Of course, the odds of that happening aren't high, so the main plan at the moment seems to be to keep me as happy as possible so that when I die, I can do so in relative comfort."

Sakura's mouth twisted, forming something between a grimace and a sneer. "So, yes, Sasuke, I do know how severe this is. I know what my chances are, and I know they aren't good. I've told you before – the worst thing about being a medic is that you know exactly what's happening!"

Sakura's voice was high and strident, but the slight glimmer in her eyes betrayed her gathering tears. Sasuke stared at her, feeling like a kid who'd lost his mother in the market. Bewildered, uncertain, and suddenly wishing everything would just magically be put to rights in the next second.

Except he knew it wouldn't. And he was growling and snapping at Sakura because he wanted her to say that it really wasn't that bad, to say that she would be cured within a week, that she'd survive, that there was no chance she wouldn't make it...

To say something to appease the little orphan inside of him that was screaming that this couldn't be happening – not to her, not to _Sakura_...

"It'll be okay, Sakura," Naruto said bracingly, once more left to compensate for Sasuke's social inadequacies and trying to ignore what he'd just heard her say. "Don't pay attention to the bastard – he's been nasty ever since you fainted on him in the break room."

Sakura was silent while she thought that over. While she had bristled like the proverbial porcupine at Sasuke's comments – both implying she was stupid and rubbing her face into things she had no real wish to think about – she knew that Sasuke was like that; when injured, whether physically or emotionally, he lashed out at all around him.

Whatever his faults and deficiencies in expressing himself, Sakura knew Sasuke cared about her – as a friend, if nothing else. Having her pass out like that after coughing blood must have been scary for him. And than having Tsunade tell them that she'd contracted the chakra-eaters and her immune system had collapsed...

For the first time since he'd entered the room, Sakura realised that Sasuke looked like a man on the verge of a breakdown. Half his face was covered by the surgical mask, so she supposed she could be pardoned for not picking up on his mood earlier, but now that she was looking for it, she could see the hint of desperation and vulnerability in his eyes as he stared at IV needle that had been taped to the back of her hand.

In spite of his earlier words, Sakura couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

She patted him on the shoulder in a commiserating fashion, and was about to tell him she wasn't giving up hope or something along those lines, when she felt her throat tighten once more.

"D-damn it..." the medic choked, grabbing a handful of tissues and raising them to her mouth just in time to catch a spray of blood as she coughed.

Her previous rant had obviously set off the bleeding in her lungs again.

The tissues were becoming damp with blood, and Sakura was beginning to struggle to draw breath. The spasms were coming too close together – she couldn't draw enough breath to fuel them. Her spine curved with their force, and she was vaguely aware of someone's hand on her back, stroking firmly between her shoulder blades in the hope of calming the convulsions wracking her lungs.

Fortunately, it eased before she passed out, and Sakura came to herself with the realisation that she was leaning on Sasuke's shoulder, still coughing weakly, while his hand ran up and down her back.

Sakura went stiff. She couldn't help it – while she'd felt someone rubbing her back during her coughing fit, she had been sure it was Naruto. After all, Sasuke always seemed to have a thing about prolonged physical contact. He'd touch someone to swat them, or shove them, or punch them...but in all Sakura's memory, he'd never hugged anyone.

And what they were doing now was dangerously close to hugging. Her forehead was resting against his collarbone, and the arm that wasn't rubbing her back was gripping her shoulder gently to stabilise her.

There was the sound of a door opening, and rapid footsteps heralded Naruto's entrance moments before a small cup of water was thrust under Sakura's nose.

"I got you some water from the little bathroom-thing over there," Naruto said, waving at the door opposite the entrance. "That's safe to drink, right?"

"As long as you took it from the tap," Sakura said wryly, taking a generous swallow from the cup, letting the cool water soothe her throat and wash the taste of iron from her mouth.

She had thought that Sasuke would let her go once she had stopped coughing, but the only change in their positions was that the hand between her shoulderblades had settled on her lower back.

Not that Sakura was complaining – she was quite comfortable as she was. She felt a bit of guilty pleasure in having Sasuke hold her like this.

"You okay now, Sakura?" Naruto asked worriedly.

Sakura knew his intentions were good, but she wanted to smack him – she didn't want to move away from Sasuke, and Naruto had just handed the Uchiha the perfect excuse.

"I'm better now," she answered honestly, waiting for Sasuke to move away now that he had verbal confirmation of her state.

But he didn't move. Sakura was going to move back, to try to look him in the eye and perhaps pick up some hint of what he was thinking, but she was distracted by the warm liquid she felt trickling from her nostrils.

Now her nose was bleeding.

Sakura started to press the soggy tissues in her hand against her nose, but she soon realised they were so soaked in blood they weren't going to absorb anymore.

"Can you get me some more tissues, Naruto?" she asked, her voice thick as she spoke through a clogged nose. "My nose is bleeding now."

Naruto practically jumped across the bed to grab the tissues. "Here. You're...you're okay, right? It doesn't hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt," Sakura sighed, pressing the wad of tissue against her nose. "Sort of...irritating, more than anything."

She grimaced as she felt the material in her hands becoming damp. She was bleeding like a hemophiliac.

"If this keeps up I may need a transfusion," she muttered. "If we have any blood to spare."

Sasuke said nothing, but silently vowed to find out what his blood type was.

-xxx-

Kakashi put the finishing touches to his improved infection map with a sense of fatalistic resignation.

He'd been told about Sakura's sudden onset of symptoms, their assumption that she must have been infected early on in the disease's spread...and then realisation had struck him – not like a bolt of lightning, but more like an earthquake. Devastating and rattling to the very core.

Sakura was the original carrier of the disease.

The infection map finally made sense. They'd been wondering _what_ Hinata, Shizune and Akina had in common for so long they'd completely overlooked _who_ they had in common.

And that person was Sakura. She'd had lunch with Hinata the week before the Hyuuga had collapsed (come to think of it, she'd probably infected Naruto and Sasuke about the same time), and she'd worked with Shizune and Akina in the hospital.

So if Sakura had spread the chakra-eaters throughout Konoha...where had she picked them up from? It wasn't like she'd been on any dangerous missions lately; she hadn't even left the village except for...

Except for her mission to Wave.

Wave, where she'd healed the people caught in that disastrous boating accident. Wave, where Akatsuki had been sighted.

And this time, understanding _was_ a bolt of lightning, one of the large sheets that lit up the sky and illuminated everything, that could turn night into day for one brief moment.

Akatsuki had deliberately engineered Sakura's infection by the chakra-eaters. It wouldn't have taken much – just scatter a vial of the dormant bacteria around her room and leave it at that. The bacteria weren't attracted to civilians, and as Kakashi doubted they would be able to survive very long without a host, the remaining cells would probably be long-dead by the time another ninja so much as set foot in the room.

The thing Kakashi couldn't figure out, though, was why. Why had the Akatsuki gone to so much trouble to unleash a fatal disease in Konoha? It was true that Leaf had been a progressively growing thorn in their side, but it made no sense for the Akatsuki to unleash a ninja-specific disease while they still needed to capture Naruto. Didn't they need the blonde man alive, at least until they performed the jutsu to extract the Kyuubi? Or had they developed some new jutsu that allowed them to extract the demons from corpses?

Then Kakashi remembered that the disease wasn't affecting Naruto because of his demonic guest. Had the Akatsuki known that would happen? Kakashi would say so – if he was engineering a fatal disease, he'd want to know every trait and aspect of it before he unleashed it.

And if he worked with that assumption, then the Akatsuki's motive now made much more sense. They were an organisation comprised solely of powerful, practically legendary missing-nin. Their attempts to capture the demon vessels usually succeeded on the first try.

But they hadn't succeeded with Naruto. Because Naruto had allies, friends, people who would die to keep him safe – something that was only too rare among the other vessels.

Akatsuki had failed to capture Naruto because he had protectors.

But this disease had the possibility of wiping out Konoha's entire ninja population. And that would take care of Naruto's friends (Kakashi didn't think they could have predicted that Sasuke's curse seal would grant him immunity as well). Then all the Akatsuki would have to do was pick up a grieving, solitary vessel. Much easier than having to mow through dozens of phenomenally powerful ninja – Sakura, Sasuke, Tsunade, Jiraiya and Kakashi himself, to name just a few – to reach him.

Kakashi sighed, dropping the chalk he'd been scrawling on the blackboard with. They'd figured out where the chakra-eaters had come from.

Now all they needed to do was find a cure.

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmyfaye for looking this over._


	7. Deterioration

**Chapter 7**

**Deterioration**

Naruto jumped when Tsunade strode into the room, dressed in the requisite get-up for the sterile room and carrying a bundle of what looked like leather straps in her arms.

"You two – out!" she snapped.

Sasuke scowled, but it was Naruto who spoke up. "Why? What are you going to do?"

"She's going to treat me," Sakura said calmly, but there was a hint of apprehension in her eyes.

Every instinct Sasuke had was telling him something was wrong. "I thought you said they'd already performed the chakra saturation technique."

"They did," Sakura agreed, shifting her legs a little beneath the blanket to prompt her friends to move.

Naruto and Sasuke obeyed the non-verbal cue and slid from their respective sides of the bed, allowing Tsunade to dump the straps on the blanket. Sakura held up one wrist, and Tsunade began fastening one of the cuffs around it, the inside covered with sheepskin to prevent the leather chaffing her skin.

Sasuke didn't claim to be a medic, but he knew that any medical procedure involving straps couldn't be pleasant.

"What are you doing?" Naruto half-yelped, his arm jerking as though he wanted to pull Sakura away from Tsunade and then thought better of it.

Sakura and Tsunade exchanged a look, and then Sakura spoke again, with just a hint of weariness in her voice, "My immune system won't attack the bacteria, as I've already said...but there is something Lady Tsunade can do. It's a little extreme, but she can pour destructive chakra into my body to try to burn the dormant bacteria out of my system."

"That sounds dangerous," Sasuke commented. His tone was indifferent, but his eyes flew to Tsunade like a pair of daggers.

"It is," the Hokage said bluntly, tightening the strap around Sakura's wrist before she began to fasten the other end to the bed post. "The chakra has to be precisely controlled to prevent the patient being permanently damaged by the procedure. Which is why I'm doing it – I don't trust any other medic to pull this off. Maybe Shizune, but that's hardly an option at the moment."

"Then why are you...?" Naruto trailed off, gesturing to the straps.

Tsunade seemed to hesitate, then admitted, "The procedure is intensely painful. Many patients have been known to lash out or fit while it's being done. The straps ensure Sakura doesn't thrash around and hurt me or herself."

Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her whole face spoke of reluctance. Without even asking, Sasuke knew Tsunade wouldn't be performing this procedure on Sakura unless it was the only possible way to help her.

But it didn't make him like it.

Naruto had gone a little pale, and his head swung between the medics like someone watching a tennis match. "But...isn't there some other way?"

The question hung heavily in the air for several long moments.

Tsunade paused in the act of strapping Sakura's other wrist down, and looked Naruto straight in the eyes, her face grim and closed. "No."

If Naruto's question had thickened the air like syrup, that word turned it into granite.

Sasuke looked at Sakura, taking in her pale face, her pinched lips...in spite of her brave front, she was clearly dreading this procedure.

Naruto had noticed too. "Can we stay? I mean, with her, while you do the procedure?"

It might have been Sasuke's imagination, but he thought Tsunade's grim mask cracked for a moment, revealing a flash of sympathy. When she spoke, however, her tone was businesslike, "Sorry, but no. I need you out – it will take about an hour, and then you can come back."

She needed complete concentration for this procedure, and she had a feeling that watching Sakura in pain would make Naruto – and probably Sasuke as well – very distracting.

Sakura tried to smile reassuringly as they shuffled out of the room, bearing a surprising resemblance to puppies turned out of their house.

The medic sighed, tugging experimentally against the straps as Tsunade secured her ankles. She was trying to stay calm, telling herself that she was a ninja and went through physical pain everyday, but the anticipation was beginning to make her sweat. Strapped to the bed, each limb tightly secured to the four corners, she felt like she was about to have a demon exorcised from her. Which, now that she thought about it, was actually a rather fitting metaphor.

Tsunade's eyes were flat when she looked up, the final contraption dangling from her hand, and Sakura parted her lips to accept the plastic gag that prevented her from biting her tongue if she did indeed have a fit. Her medical mind reminded her – unenthusiastically – that it was same type used on patients receiving electroshock therapy.

The pink-haired woman met her teacher's weary eyes and nodded once.

Tsunade's fingers twisted through a complex array of seals, and then she pressed her hands to the papery gown covering Sakura's stomach.

And then Sakura was biting down on the gag in an attempt to smother her screams.

-xxx-

One hour was sixty minutes. Sixty minutes was three thousand, six hundred seconds.

And Sasuke planned on counting every one of them off on the plastic clock mounted on the wall outside the airlock.

When Tsunade had told him and Naruto to leave the room, Naruto had obeyed the spirit of the command, and departed to see Hinata. Sasuke had obeyed the letter of the law.

He had a feeling she might have meant for him to move beyond the airlock and not simply sit in the tiny space between the glass door and the door to the sterile room, but since she'd never specifically made that distinction, Sasuke saw no reason to move.

The Uchiha frowned, his eyes locked onto the thin second hand, counting down each jerky movement. Assuming Tsunade had begun perhaps five minutes after they had left the room, then the procedure still had three thousand, two hundred and twenty seconds to go.

-xxx-

"Hey, remember that April Fool's Day when Sakura hid Lady Tsunade's sake by transforming them to look like piles of paperwork?" Ino asked Hinata.

The dark-haired woman giggled, recognising Ino's efforts for what it was. An attempt to divert everyone's thoughts – including her own – from the procedure Naruto had told them about. The procedure Sakura would be enduring even now.

Naruto had come into their ward about ten minutes ago and sat miserably on the edge of Hinata's bed, staring at the clock on the wall with unnerving intensity. He still had yet to look away from it.

Tentatively, Hinata slid her hand across the sheets, touching the edge of his palm with her fingertips in a touch as light as the caress of a moth's wing. She didn't know if he would accept her offer of comfort or simply ignore it but after a moment, his hand turned over and clasped hers.

"...so Lady Tsunade was searching for her sake for the whole day," Ino was narrating. "Eventually, she had to go out and buy some more, but since Sakura had only cast the transformation with the intention of it lasting about half a day or so, by the time she got back, they'd all changed back. I think Lady Tsunade would have been mad, but since Sakura was only thirteen and this was in the first six months of her apprenticeship, I think she was more impressed with the chakra control it would have taken for a thirteen year old kid to successfully transform so many sake bottles with a set time limit for the transformation."

Shikamaru chuckled. He still had yet to return to his own hospital bed, and Hinata thought he made a rather strange picture – sitting on Ino's bed and lounging against the foot board, his feet level with her hips.

"I think I remember that," Chouji commented. "At least, I remember wondering how she'd gotten away with it."

"Sakura pulled a prank?" Naruto said, the story dragging him from his contemplative mood.

Ino nodded. "A couple of months after you went off to train with Jiraiya. Everyone was still a little stressed, so she channeled hers into a bit of mischief."

The blonde woman had always wondered how much of that had been inspired by Naruto's pranks.

With a little sigh, Ino shook her head and glance at the clock.

The procedure was about half an hour through.

-xxx-

Sasuke was surprised when Tsunade opened the door after only forty-three minutes and twenty-three seconds had passed. Hadn't she said the procedure would take an hour?

He said so, and received a bitter, blank stare in answer.

"I had to stop," the Hokage said at last, her voice slightly hoarse. "It was causing too much damage."

She didn't run through the airlock, but she did walk very quickly. Sasuke didn't see where she went – he wasn't paying attention. He was more interested in the medic that was still behind the door.

He stepped inside the sterile room as quietly as he could, in case of...he didn't know what, really, he just wanted to keep his entry as silent as possible.

Sakura had been released from the straps, and the leather coils were piled beneath the foot of the bed. She was curled into a ball in the middle of the mattress, soaked in sweat and shaking like someone with palsy. Her eyes were clamped tightly shut, and her breathing was soft and ragged as though she were trying not to cry.

_'Tsunade wasn't kidding about how much it would hurt,'_ Sakura thought as she struggled to get her body under control.

Even now that the procedure had ended, her body still stung and throbbed as though there was acid running through her instead of blood. She kept trying to breathe evenly, but the residual spasms wracking her body made it difficult. She actually felt like crying, and considering that the last time she'd cried from the sheer pain of something had been when she was thirteen and had broken both her arms during a training exercise, that was saying a lot.

Her throat burned, and Sakura barely had time to snatch at the bedside table, seize some sort of soft fabric and press it to her mouth before she was coughing desperately, feeling as though her lungs were trying to exit her body through her throat.

When she drew the material back, she noted it was Sasuke's handkerchief, and that it was now covered in blood once more. She doubted the cloth would ever really recover.

She jumped when someone touched her shoulder, and twisted her aching body around to see Sasuke standing beside her bed, his face unreadable. Automatically, she tried to paste a comforting smile on her face.

"You don't have to do that," Sasuke said softly.

Sakura blinked. "Do what?"

"Smile when you don't want to."

Sakura swallowed, a little uncomfortable with him reading her so easily, and dropped her eyes to handkerchief now wadded in her fist, soggy with blood. "I think I ruined your handkerchief."

Sasuke was slightly disturbed to realise that, even all these weeks after he'd given it to her, Sakura still referred to the handkerchief as his property. As though she expected him to demand its return any moment. Did she really think him so ungenerous, or was she simply so unused to kindness from him?

Neither option was very appealing.

The Uchiha shrugged disinterestedly, "I'll give you another one."

Sakura grinned weakly, but Sasuke was pleased to note her smile was genuine this time.

-xxx-

"What do you mean, it's not a match?" Naruto nearly shouted.

Tsunade sighed, her hand twitching as though she was unconsciously reaching for a sake bottle. "I mean, your blood type is not a match to Sakura's. Neither is Sasuke's, for that matter."

Naruto halted mid-rant, twisting to look at his friend. "You got tested, too?"

Sasuke reflected that the expression on Naruto's face was quite similar to the expression on Tsunade's face when he'd asked to be tested. Was it so unbelievable that he'd try to help Sakura?

Once he'd heard that Sakura's blood loss was reaching dangerous proportions and that she needed a transfusion, he'd been moments behind Naruto in demanding to be tested.

But Naruto seemed to get over his surprise very quickly, as the next moment he was practically shouting at Tsunade again. "But...but Sakura once told me the blood doesn't have to match to donate!"

The Hokage sighed, and had a brief moment to wonder why she let Naruto get away with these sort of outbursts. "Your blood is type A, and that means you have type A antigens in your blood. Sasuke's blood type is AB, and that means he has both A and B type antigens in his blood. Meanwhile, Sakura's blood is type O, and that means she lacks those types of antigens. We can't give someone blood that possesses antigens they don't have. So, while she could donate blood to either of you, and Naruto could also donate blood to Sasuke...neither of you can donate blood to her."

"Oh." Naruto looked the very definition of crestfallen.

While Sasuke knew that blood type was determined by genetics and not by personality, he thought it seemed to say something about them. That both Sakura and Naruto could give, while he could do nothing but take.

"Fortunately, the third candidate proved a match," Tsunade went on. "Kakashi heard about it, and asked to be tested as well. He's type O, so he can donate blood to Sakura. It'll take some doing, as he'll need to give the blood outside the isolation wing and then it will have to be transported in, but Sakura will get what she needs."

-xxx-

Kakashi watched the needle enter his skin, and observed his blood spiral through the tube and into the attached bag with slightly morbid fascination.

He'd heard that Sakura's condition was worsening, to the point where she was losing so much blood she would probably need a transfusion in the near future. He'd gotten himself tested, just on the off-chance of being able to help, and the next thing he knew, he was being informed that his blood type was a match to Sakura's, and if he wanted to donate to her he would have to go the hospital.

So here he was, donating blood so his student could survive a little longer, so she might live to see a cure, because there was no other way she could beat this disease. Either they'd find a cure and heal her completely...or she'd die. There was simply no middle ground.

At least, from what Tsunade's reports were telling him. While the medics were working practically around the clock to perform the chakra saturation technique and keep the bacteria dormant, it just wasn't sustainable for the long term. Sakura's collapsed immune system simply couldn't fight them off, and the bacteria kept 'waking up' and attacking her all over again.

It was a case of one step forward, two steps back. And in spite of those steps forward, that was still deterioration.

At least now he felt like he was doing something. Kakashi's investigation had ended once they'd pinned down the origin of the chakra-eaters, and the sudden lack of activity had left him feeling rather useless. While the Akatsuki undoubtedly had some sort of cure, there was little hope they could be tracked down and forced to yield it in time.

It was all up to the scientists and medics now – he certainly didn't have the knowledge to aid in finding a cure. All he could do was sit around and wait for news, whether good or bad.

Inactivity had never sat well with Kakashi.

-xxx-

Sasuke was only half paying attention to the medic bustling through the sterile room, setting up the transfusion, the bag filled with Kakashi's blood being hooked to a stand as an IV needle was slipped into the blue vein at Sakura's elbow.

In the week since she'd been admitted to the sterile room, Sakura's condition had gone downhill at an unnervingly rapid rate. As the chakra-eaters swarmed throughout her system, she'd become sicker and sicker; her temperature climbing, her coughing spells becoming longer and harsher, her fainting more frequent. She was now too ill to even stumble the few steps to the bathroom, and the medics had been forced to set up a catheter.

Coupled with the various machines that had been set up around her bedside, Sakura could barely move in her bed for the labyrinth of tubes and wires that either monitored her condition or struggled to keep her alive. Her stomach and intestines were bleeding so severely she wasn't able to digest food, and she was instead receiving her nourishment from a drip that fed glucose and basic ions straight to her bloodstream. The bleeding in her lungs was beginning to impair her breathing, and while they couldn't give her an oxygen mask or the like in case she coughed up blood in her sleep, they'd taken to upping the oxygen content of the sterile air that was being pumped into the room.

Since entering the room, Sasuke had to force himself to take shallow breaths or he'd become dizzy.

Sakura was still unconscious – even the sensation of a new needle being placed in her skin didn't rouse her. But that was to be expected. Sakura's body was shutting down by tiny increments as her organs began to descend the slippery slope towards complete failure, and she was spending more and more of her time dead to the world.

Sasuke hoped that expression stayed figurative, and never progressed to the literal.

Because it looked like it could. In fact, when he'd entered the room, the first thought that flew through his mind was that she looked like a corpse. Her skin was as pale as bleached bone, her pink hair seeming as vivid as a neon light against it, even though the strands were damp and stringy with sweat.

The whole picture made him feel irrationally angry. Sakura was hurting, was under threat from something that was slowly killing her before his eyes...and there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could fight, nothing he could hurt, nothing he could punish for it. The culprit wasn't an enemy ninja; it was a multitude of microorganisms that were devouring her from the inside-out.

Her hand rested limply on the blanket, tightly curled, and Sasuke covered it with his own on impulse, a little surprised to realise that his fingers could engulf her entire fist. He remembered once hearing that your closed fist was the size of your heart – did that mean Sakura's heart could fit in the palm of his hand?

It was easy to forget how physically small Sakura was when she yelling at volumes that could crack glass or shattering boulders with a flick of her wrist. Easy to forget that she had to tilt her face back to look him in the eye, easy to forget that the top of her head was only a little higher than his collarbone.

While he knew Sakura was far from helpless, seeing her lying motionless in the hospital bed – looking smaller and more fragile than she ever had since she had been twelve years old – made him feel strangely protective. He brushed a sweat-soaked strand away from where it was plastered to her forehead, grimacing at the heat that rose from her skin.

Her temperature was rising.

Sasuke cast around for a cloth or sponge – something he could use to try to bring her temperature down – and his eyes landed on the handkerchief on the bedside table. The material had faded a little now after so many washes and soaks, but it could still serve the purpose he needed it to.

After filling a small basin with cold water from the tiny bathroom, Sasuke set to work running the damp cloth across Sakura's exposed skin, trying to bring her temperature down. He sponged the wet handkerchief down her arms, careful to avoid jostling the various IV needles and tubes.

Sakura twitched – apparently the cold water was rousing her.

"I can't go the Academy today, Mum, I feel sick..." she muttered, opening eyes that were like frosted glass – dull and opaque.

Sasuke wondered if she was having fever dreams. Probably hallucinating she was back in the Academy, judging by her comment.

"I don't feel good..." she slurred. "Can you give me a hug?"

Sasuke froze. What could he do? She seemed convinced that he was her mother, and while he knew what a mother would do in this situation...what could _he_ do?

"Please, Mum?" Sakura implored, her arms beginning to shift as though she were struggling to raise them and wind them about his neck.

Sasuke wasn't exactly comfortable with this idea, but he couldn't stand seeing the look of distress and helpless appeal on Sakura's face. So he set the wet cloth aside, bent down, and – careful of the machines she was hooked up to – wrapped his arms loosely around her, holding her gently to him, her skin feeling like a furnace against his own.

"I love you," Sakura whispered, tilting her head so her lips brushed against his cheek in a soft kiss.

Sasuke did his very best to ignore the warm contentment that rushed through his chest. He told himself it didn't mean anything – she was just hallucinating. She thought he was her mother, and Sakura would have probably been an affectionate child; she was an affectionate adult, come to that.

The feeling dimmed a little, but refused to leave.

"I really don't feel well..." Sakura muttered again, pressing her face against his collarbone. "Maybe we should go see the doctor..."

Sasuke's stomach knotted. Even in her delirious state, Sakura realised she was very ill. Dangerously so.

Her organs were beginning to fail. Sasuke knew it was only a matter of time before she slipped into a coma, and then...

Sasuke really didn't want to think about that.

He gripped her a little tighter, but this time it wasn't for her comfort – it was for his. It was for the childlike voice in the back of his mind insisting that if he held her, if he just kept hanging on...then everything would be okay.

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaya for beta-ing this._


	8. Slipping Away

**Chapter 8**

**Slipping Away**

Sakura was getting worse.

Before, her lapses into unconsciousness were few and far between, but now she spent perhaps half an hour out of every day awake and aware of her surroundings and the rest unconscious or in a delirium.

"I used to hate my hair..." she mumbled. "I mean, who has pink hair? It looks like I fell into a vat of bubblegum or something..."

Sasuke chose not comment, gently scrubbing a bloodied lock of the distinctive mane. Sakura had suffered a nasty coughing fit a few minutes ago, and a spray of blood had caught a lock of her hair.

"Plus, it's pretty distinctive," she continued. "Stands out during battles, practically sings out who I am to the enemy...hey, Ino, remember when there was that bunch of missing-nin trying to kill me before I could treat that lord's son, and you and Tenten dyed your hair pink so they wouldn't be able to pick me out so easily..."

Sasuke grimaced. It was mark of how sick Sakura was, that she seemed to swing between recognising him and calling him Ino or Naruto. She'd called him Hinata once, too.

"How are things going with Shikamaru, anyway?" she muttered, her eyes fluttering closed. "I keep telling you – your subtle flirting-slash-seduction plan just doesn't seem to be working. Genius he may be, but I think you should just grab him by the collar and kiss him senseless – that ought to get his attention!"

Sakura gave a burst of giddy laughter, prompting Sasuke to wonder if the medics were giving her any sort of medication and what kind.

"And shut up about that!" Sakura suddenly exclaimed, staring at a random point on the ceiling. "This is a totally different situation."

Privately, Sasuke wondered exactly what situation Sakura was referring to, but finished cleaning her lock of hair in silence as she degenerated into incoherent babblings. He caught snippets of sentences, most of which contained the words Mum, Dad, Naruto, or Ino in them.

"I may love him..." she slurred eventually, her eyes beginning to flutter closed. "But Sasuke's a jerk!"

_'This means nothing!'_ he told himself, trying to ignore the way his heart suddenly thundered in his ears. _'Like when she kissed you. She's just having a flashback to her Academy days, back when she had a crush on you.'_

The idea hurt, and he studiously ignored Sakura's further ramblings as she slowly trailed off into silence.

He tipped out the pink-tinged water and wrung out the sponge, leaving both in the bathroom.

Sakura was clearly unconsciousness when he returned, little wheezing noises issuing from her mouth, like a snoring puppy.

He surveyed the woman grimly, taking stock of the tubes and wires that had only increased in number since his last visit, the monitors humming and beeping softly in the background. Sasuke didn't know the names of most of them – he didn't even know what some of them were there for. But he could guess that they were all showing increasingly weakening readings.

Tsunade had told them that Sakura's kidneys were on the verge of shutting down. That, in and of itself, might not be so life-threatening – she could be put on dialysis – but her liver looked like it was soon to follow. And there was no medicine, machine, or jutsu that could compensate for a failing liver.

Much as the medics had fought to save her...Sakura was dying.

And there was nothing Sasuke could do about it. All he could do was stand at her bedside and clean blood from her hair.

His hands curled into fists as he fought against the desire – the _need_ – to hit something, to lash out...

"Sasuke...?"

Her voice was weak and thready, but it wasn't slurred or mumbled, and her slowly opening eyes were dull but focused.

"Yeah?" he said quietly, afraid to shatter Sakura's moment of coherency and send her hurtling into delirium once more.

Sakura surveyed the machines and IVs hooked to every spare inch of skin before speaking. "I'm in a bad way, aren't I?"

Sasuke swallowed. "Yeah..."

And without skipping a beat, she continued, "I'm dying, aren't I?"

Sasuke knew there was no point in lying to her, but he couldn't bring himself to say the words – his throat closed tight whenever he thought of them. So he settled for a jerky nod.

"I thought so." Her tone lacked any form of surprise or worry – it was one of resignation and acceptance.

Sakura's eyes closed, as though in defeat, but her voice was strong when she spoke. "I need to talk to Tsunade. There's something...an idea, really...but there's something she might be able to do."

She didn't have to tell Sasuke twice. He practically ran from the sterile room, throwing off the mask and gloves as he went.

-xxx-

Tsunade concentrated on feeling out Tenten's chakra channels, trying to sense where they had been degraded. As Tenten was the earliest they'd ever identified a case, they were studying her in an effort to learn more about the chakra-eaters. And the more they learned, the more likely they were to uncover a weakness.

Tsunade wasn't really holding out hope of finding anything probative, but they were desperate for a cure – especially given Sakura's deteriorating condition – and had to explore any avenue with even the slightest chance of leading to one.

"No real change," she muttered. "I'm sorry, Tenten, but the people back at the lab want some of your blood again."

Tenten pulled a face, but offered Tsunade her arm.

"Is is really necessary?" Neji muttered from his own bed. "Didn't you send them some of her blood yesterday – what do they keep doing with it?"

Tsunade ignored him; she knew Neji was only concerned about his girlfriend. The Hokage was about to insert the needle into Tenten's arm when the door flew open.

Kiba – who had been dozing happily in his bed – bolted upright, his fist clenched, ready to meet the threat.

But Sasuke ignored him, his eyes homing in on Tsunade. "Sakura says she has an idea about how to stop this disease."

The needle, the blood the scientists needed, and even Tenten were forgotten. Tsunade rose to her feet so quickly the chair she had been sitting in went skidding across the room.

-xxx-

"...so you think that this jutsu, with the modifications you've described, would be able to cure you?"

Sakura nodded. Even that tiny motion took effort. Her mind was beginning to swim, and she had a feeling she was going to sink back into unconsciousness soon.

Tsunade sighed. "It's a good idea, Sakura..."

"I sense a 'but' coming..." the younger woman mumbled.

"But the degree of chakra control required to do this...it just doesn't exist," Tsunade said gently. "We can't manipulate bodies on the cellular level – if we could, there'd be no injury we couldn't heal."

"Damn..." Sakura muttered, her eyed slowly slipping closed.

"Sakura!" Tsunade snapped, tapping her cheek roughly. "Come on, Sakura..."

"I don't wanna eat ramen now, Naruto..." she muttered, swatting feebly at Tsunade's hand.

Sakura's moment of coherency was over.

"But you can go ask Hinata if you want," the pink-haired medic slurred, her voice tapering into silence as she slipped into unconsciousness once more.

Tsunade automatically checked the monitors, wincing at their weak readings. Even their short conversation had drained Sakura immensely.

There _had_ to be something the medics could do.

-xxx-

Naruto and Sasuke hovered at the edge of the knot of medics in the break room, bent over a table as they discussed what they could do for Sakura.

Tsunade's face could have been carved in stone as she surveyed the various printouts and charts that screamed Sakura's failing condition in ink and pencil.

"We could try chakra donation," she finally said in a low voice.

The medics paused.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Lady Tsunade?" one of them asked tremulously. "I mean, the risks alone would-"

"I know the risks," the Hokage snapped. "I know it will be difficult to find a donor willing to consent to the procedure, but-"

"I'll consent!" Naruto yelled, making everyone in the room cringe as their eardrums shuddered. "I'll consent! Just tell me what I have to do!"

"I don't think you understand, Naruto..." Tsunade began slowly. "Donating chakra isn't like donating blood. We do it as a last-ditch procedure because of the risks it carries. If there is the slightest slip, the slightest mistake...it can permanently cripple the donor's chakra system, and the recipient can be fatally overloaded. It's not like allowing someone to use your chakra – you don't just lend them your energy for a while. When you donate chakra...your chakra is actually sucked from your body and is circulated in another's. And in this case...there's hardly much risk of an overload on Sakura's part, because her own chakra levels are so low, but the donor...the donor would be risking a lot."

"I don't care!" Naruto proclaimed. "I'm going to help Sakura!"

Tsunade studied him for a moment, then – apparently deciding that he wasn't going to be dissuaded – she stood and walked over to him, yanking his head down so she could inspect his hair.

"Hey, what are you doing?" the blonde man protested, even though he made no move to shrug her away.

"I'm sorry, Naruto, but you can't donate to Sakura," Tsunade said bluntly, releasing him.

"_What? Why?_"

"You're a clockwise type," the Hokage explained. "Sakura is a counterclockwise type. Your rotation is opposite to that of Sakura, and while it wouldn't matter if you were lending her chakra, it's a different story if you're donating. Your chakra will be fighting against the flow of her own...and it will probably end up doing more harm than good."

"Oh." Naruto stared morosely at the floor.

"I'm a counterclockwise type."

Tsunade blinked in surprise, her eyes shifting to the dark-haired man standing beside Naruto. "What was that?"

"I'm a counterclockwise type," Sasuke repeated, looking mildly irritated. "I can donate."

He tried not to be insulted by the incredulous stares that were being directed his way.

"I don't think you quite appreciate how risky the procedure is..." Tsunade said slowly. "If it goes wrong...you'll be unable to use chakra, Sasuke. You'd never be able to perform a jutsu again."

"So you've said," Sasuke snapped. He'd been right beside Naruto – he'd heard the Hokage's explanation of the risks. He knew how dangerous the donation was. He knew it might cripple his abilities as a ninja...but he was still going to do it.

Because living in a world where he was incapable of being a ninja was not nearly as terrifying as the prospect of living in a world without Sakura.

-xxx-

Sasuke knelt beside Sakura, feeling a little uncertain as he took her hands in his. Tsunade nodded, guiding their joined hands to rest on the unconscious girl's stomach and the seals that had been drawn there.

Sasuke didn't know how they had managed it, but the medics had somehow moved Sakura from her bed in the sterile room to the floor beside it. A large sheet of paper had been placed underneath her, and Tsunade had spent nearly an hour drawing the complex array of symbols this jutsu demanded on it and Sakura.

The Hokage double-checked her inkings, darting glances at the pink-haired medic, a little concerned at the length of time she had remained unaware. She hadn't even stirred when Tsunade stripped her and painted the necessary symbols on her body.

Sasuke tried to sit beside his unconscious teammate in such a way that he didn't disturb any of the writing. Tsunade had preserved her student's modesty with towels draped across her body – one across her breasts and the other spanning the juncture of her thighs – but the result was still displaying a lot more of Sakura's skin than Sasuke was accustomed to seeing at any given time.

_'You are not staring at her,'_ he told himself. _'You are not staring at her. You are not going to ogle a sick and unconscious woman, because that is reaching all new levels of sad and pathetic. You are not staring at her.'_

Tsunade's fingers began to slowly form the seals required for her to act as a conduit between the two ninjas, eventually pressing her palms to their joined hands and entering a healing trance.

Sasuke braced himself. He'd had his chakra drained before and it always felt sickening – like a leech draining blood. He grimaced as he felt the telltale weakening of his limbs, the way the world swam, as though his blood pressure had just taken a nosedive.

It didn't last as long as he would have expected it to. It was perhaps two minutes, maybe three, before Tsunade removed her hands.

Sasuke was about to ask if that was it, when he was distracted by Sakura stirring beside him.

"Lady Tsunade..." she mumbled, her head darting from side to side as she tried to assess her situation. "Why am I on the floor? And why am I naked, except for a few towels in strategic places? And why do I feel...sort of energized, but not?"

"We just finished a chakra donation," Tsunade explained. "Sasuke, get out while we get Sakura dressed again."

Sasuke would have scowled at her high-handed manner but he was still feeling rather nauseous and shaky, so he staggered obediently into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. He heard the soft murmur of voices from the room but couldn't make out what they were saying until Tsunade called him back in.

Sakura was lying in the bed again, wiping the last of the ink from her face. The Hokage took Sasuke's hand and he felt the cool touch of her chakra probe at him.

"Well, good news, Sasuke, there's no problem with your chakra channels," Tsunade said when she released him. "The donation went perfectly. Neither you nor Sakura will have any long-lasting ill-effects."

"Yeah, thanks for your chakra, Sasuke!" Sakura chimed, sounding more clear and coherent than she had in days. "I feel great! Still sick, but my mind feels...clear, you know?"

Tsunade wasn't looking nearly as happy. She was checking the monitors, tapping some as though she wasn't quite sure they were working properly, a frown digging ever deeper into her face.

"What's wrong?" Sakura asked, becoming tense. "You've got this look on your face...like you're about to tell me I'm going to die."

Tsunade's eyes flashed to her, and the hint of fear in the blonde's eyes made Sakura's stomach lurch. "The chakra donation...it isn't doing what we thought it would. We intended it to be like an injection of energy – it should have boosted your organs, and maybe even given your immune system a wake-up call...but it hasn't. It hasn't done anything...except wake you up."

Sasuke stiffened. Tsunade was telling them that in spite of the risk he'd just run, in spite of the fact that his chakra was now circulating through Sakura's body...all they'd done was ensure she would be conscious as her body continued to decline.

-xxx-

_AN: Once again, this chapter is free of misspelling, bad grammar and general screw-ups by the grace of justcallmefaye._

_Also, Blueyedblonde has drawn a wonderful fanart for this chapter – the link can be found in my profile._


	9. The Forbidden Jutsu

**Chapter 9**

**The Forbidden Jutsu**

Sasuke stared numbly at the wall in front of him, trying to wrap his mind around the concept before him.

The medics had run a battery of tests, confirming what Tsunade had already suspected. All Sasuke's chakra donation had done was banish the delirium and spells of unconsciousness. Her immune system was still nonexistent and her organs were still failing.

In other words, all she had gained was the coherency to put her affairs in order.

Sakura was dying – the medics had given her perhaps two months. The chakra donation had done nothing. The disease had progressed too far too fast, and her body was caving unnervingly quickly beneath the assault.

Sasuke's mind could barely entertain the thought that, in two months, he might be attending Sakura's funeral. The thought made his chest burn and his throat constrict as though someone were strangling him.

"She can't do this," he said in a low voice to the wall in front of him. As though speaking aloud would somehow make the words real. "She can't die. She just...she can't – I won't let her..."

_'Oh, yeah?'_ some snarky part of Sasuke's brain asked him. _'How? What can you do?'_

Sasuke shut his eyes and dug his fingers into his temples in an effort to quiet the voice, in an effort to erase the mental images it brought with it: going to Sakura's funeral and watching the dirt hit her coffin...walking to the bridge to meet with Naruto and Kakashi and seeing no pink hair blowing in the wind...eating at Ichiraku, just he and Naruto and Hinata, no smiling green eyes to be seen...

Logically, he knew the world wouldn't stop turning when Sakura died. He knew Konoha would mourn, and then life in the village would continue as it always had.

Logically, he knew his life would go on.

But what kind of life would it be without Sakura?

-xxx-

Naruto sniffled behind his mask, trying to control the urge to cry. He held Sakura's hand in his, running his thumb across her fingers, taking care to avoid the IV line.

"It's going to be okay, Naruto," Sakura soothed. "Two months is plenty of time for the medics to come up with something new – I'll be cured in no time, you just wait and see!"

"But what if you're not?" Naruto asked miserably.

Sakura had no answer to that.

So she simply propped herself up on her pillows and looped her arms around his neck, being careful not to yank on any of her IVs. She rested her cheek against his as he clutched at her shoulders, pressing her so tightly to him it hurt.

Naruto knew his grip was probably painful, but he couldn't bring himself to let go or even ease it a little. Because a little voice in the back of his mind was insisting that it could be the last time he ever held his friend – the medics had made that quite clear.

Sakura's chakra levels were dropping steadily and her organs were failing, both of which were a result of the chakra-eaters infection...and neither of which would be getting better anytime soon.

And he couldn't do anything. He, Uzumaki Naruto, who completed the Rasengan, who had the power of the Kyuubi at his fingertips...for all his power, he could do nothing but watch his best friend die.

At that thought, Naruto had to struggle to hold in his tears.

-xxx-

Kakashi stood in front of the memorial, for once not thinking of his teammates, but trying to reconcile himself to the possibility that he might soon have one more grave to visit.

Except it wouldn't be his teammates. It would be Haruno Sakura – his student, and a member of the only team who had ever passed his test.

Granted, the medics had given her two months, but the failed chakra donation seemed like the final nail in the coffin. As though everything were over now, and Sakura's death was only a matter of time.

Strangely, the predominant thought in Kakashi's mind was that it simply wasn't right. Of all of them, he'd never imagined Sakura would be the first to go. Himself, most likely (simple age was against him), Sasuke, perhaps (revenge was a risky business after all), Naruto, maybe (having a demon sealed inside you and being sought by the Akatsuki was anything but safe)...but Sakura?

Somehow, in all the possible scenarios Kakashi's rather cynical mind had constructed, Sakura had outlived them all in every one of them. The idea that she might be the first to die had never once crossed his mind.

Perhaps because they always made such an effort to protect her. When the chips were down, it was Sakura that every male member of Team 7 tried to safeguard. It wasn't a disparagement on her gender or a misconception of her abilities. It wasn't even something they really thought about. It was something they just _did_, period.

And he'd never pictured a threat they couldn't protect her from.

He knew that he and the others would give their lives for Sakura in a heartbeat. If one of them could take the disease and spare her, he was sure he wouldn't get a chance to volunteer – Naruto and Sasuke would have beaten him to it.

But they couldn't. There was no blade to step in front of, no jutsu to push her out of the way of...nothing but a slew of bacteria they couldn't even see, much less fight.

They couldn't protect her from this.

And that – for Kakashi, and he'd guess for Naruto and Sasuke, too – was the bitterest pill to swallow.

-xxx-

Ino remained curled on the floor, staring resentfully at the wall, ignoring the rapid knocking at the door. When Tsunade had given them the news that the chakra donation hadn't worked, and that Sakura had been given maybe two months to live, Chouji, Hinata and Shikamaru seemed to have slipped into a state of shock, while Ino had promptly shut herself in the bathroom, seeking some peace for her meltdown.

The meltdown that was currently being interrupted by the incessant knocking.

"Go away!" Ino snapped, wishing there was a lock on the door.

There was a pause, a muttered word that sounded suspiciously like 'troublesome'...and then door was opened, in blatant disregard to Ino's orders!

"What are you doing?" she snapped at Shikamaru, who was looking determined, but a little unsure never the less.

"I could have been changing, you know?" Ino knew she was speaking in a high, squeaky growl rather like the kind a chihuahua might give out, but she couldn't bring herself to care. "Or showering, or..."

"But you weren't," was all Shikamaru said.

Ino couldn't really think of an appropriate retort, so she settled for glaring ugly death at him. Shikamaru took no notice.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Ino wanted to hit him. "_What's wrong?_ How about the fact that my friend's dying? That she's locked up in some sterile room dying of this stupid disease and I can't even visit her? They're all saying that she won't last two months and I can't even _see_ her-"

Ino's voice broke off in a sob. Sakura was dying...and she wasn't even allowed to visit her. She had to stay in her ward like a good patient and pretend her friend wasn't wasting away by degrees in the same hospital.

"It'll work out," Shikamaru offered, seeming a little unnerved by her panic. "I know it will."

"Liar."

Shikamaru sighed, and sat down beside the blonde. "You'll see – I'll take you out to dinner when we're better, and we'll be laughing about this."

There was a pause, and then, "Shikamaru...are you asking me on a date?"

"Are you going to say 'yes'?"

Ino's laugh turned into a sniffle mid-way. "Probably...yeah..."

"Then yes, I'm asking you on a date." Shikamaru hoped his voice sounded a lot more confident than he felt.

Ino sniffled again, but her voice was decidedly more cheerful when she spoke, "You know your timing sucks, right?"

He smirked. "Yeah, but it got you to stop crying, didn't it?"

-xxx-

Tenten stared absently at the crossword puzzle she had begged one of the medics to bring in, claiming her brain was atrophying when she had nothing to do but sit in bed and stare at the walls all day.

Well, she and Neji had also taken advantage of their incarceration to make-out rather frequently, but she wasn't going to tell the medic that.

The medic had brought the crossword, as requested, and news on Sakura's condition about half an hour ago.

And Tenten had yet to touch pencil to paper. She'd found herself staring at the black and white squares, lost in thought.

Sakura was dying. The medic hadn't actually said 'dying', of course – he'd tiptoed around the word like a nervous ballet dancer – but Tenten knew what he meant.

It still seemed ludicrous. Sakura had actually treated Tenten for the disease, and the idea of her succumbing to it seemed...wrong, somehow.

"Are you...okay?" Kiba asked quietly.

Tenten nodded, blinking dazedly.

"She took us out for drinks, you know?" she told the room at large. "After this mission where Ino and I had to dye our hair pink so Sakura wouldn't be so noticeable to the enemy, she insisted on taking us out and getting a picture to commemorate the event."

"I remember that," Neji interjected. "You still had pink hair the next day."

"Yeah, the dye lasted a while," Tenten said absently, remembering how Neji had been taken aback at her change in appearance when she'd returned.

She'd sneaked into his room in the Hyuuga estate – quite an accomplishment in and of itself – feeling rather daring and a little mischievous. To say Neji had been shocked to find her there when he returned from training had been an understatement, though he later confessed much of his shock had come from the sight of pink hair – for a moment, he'd thought it was Sakura who was waiting in his room.

She'd never realised how much people identified Sakura by her pink hair until her own hair was dyed to match the medic's. Tenten couldn't count how many times people had called out Sakura's name as she walked down the street until the dye eventually washed out after many showers, restoring her original brunette tint.

Now, Tenten found herself wondering if she'd ever see pink hair in Konoha again.

"She's not dead," Neji pointed out.

"No," Tenten agreed in an exceedingly level voice. "She's just going to be."

Neji sighed. "Sakura is one of the best medics the hospital has. So good that even other villages routinely request her expertise. Do you think they will let her die?"

Tenten chuckled weakly. "Good point."

It didn't really make her feel any better, but she appreciated Neji's effort.

-xxx-

Sakura rested her head against her pillow, staring blankly at the ceiling.

The medics knew she was going to die. They were trying to hide it from her, but they needn't have bothered; Sakura was a medic herself, and she knew all too well how to read the soft resignation in their eyes and the too-sweet tone to their voices.

Sakura knew she was going to die. Unless she did something about it.

Tsunade had told her that the level of chakra control required to perform the jutsu she'd suggested simply wasn't possible. But drowning out those words was the vivid memory of those times when she had dragged a patient back from the brink of death after all the medics had given up on them, and when even Tsunade herself said Sakura's talent outstripped any medic she'd seen before or since...

It might not work – in fact, it might fail miserably and leave her worse off than she was before...but she had to try.

She reached behind her, wincing as one of her IVs was momentarily caught in the crook of her elbow, and pressed the call button.

She needed to talk to Tsunade.

-xxx-

Sasuke wasn't really surprised when Naruto joined him at the nurse's station as the isolation wing began to wind down for the night. Sasuke had been there for at least an hour already – if he couldn't stay the night in the sterile room, he would resort to the next best thing; keeping tabs on Sakura's condition via the monitors at the nurses' station.

Granted, he didn't have any idea what they were showing, but he would notice if there was a big change. Not to mention that alarms would go off if Sakura's condition dropped too sharply.

Though Sasuke knew there was nothing he could do, he wanted to be alerted the instant Sakura's condition changed. And he suspected Naruto felt the same way.

-xxx-

"...and you're determined to do this?" Tsunade asked.

"I think I'm the only one who can," Sakura said honestly. "I mean, remember when I...you said that changed me."

Tsunade shook her head slowly, more in admiration than any gesture of censor. "It did, you know. So, all you need me to do is make sure no one interrupts?"

Sakura nodded. "Pretty much. I mean, you're the Hokage – no one will argue with you. Well, maybe Naruto, but I'm sure once you explain things..."

Tsunade smiled, thought it seemed a little strained.

"Well..." Sakura said into the oppressive silence as she contemplated the magnitude of what she was about to do. "Here I go then."

She took a deep breath, and stretched her arms out in front of her, remembering to send a brief, silent thanks to Sasuke – after all, she wouldn't have been able to do this without his help.

Because Sasuke had given her something besides coherency – he'd given her chakra.

And now Sakura was using that chakra to pave out her chakra network in her arms. It had degraded since the bacterial infection, and if she was going to have even a chance of performing a jutsu, she needed to strengthen it once again. So, digging up the memories of every diagram she'd ever seen of the chakra networks in a human body, she began to send pure chakra into her arms, along the dilapidated channels.

It was painful, rather like forcing red-hot needles through her veins. But Sakura persisted – she couldn't perform the jutsu unless she had something approaching a normal chakra network. She knew what she was doing carried a lot of risk...but if she didn't try it, she was as good as dead anyway.

At least this way, she had a chance.

When the last flush of chakra finally repaired her channels, leaving her feeling something close to normal, Sakura risked a glance at the monitors.

They were going crazy, her body's response to the pain she'd just endured blaring across their screens.

Sakura glanced at Tsunade, and delivered her last instruction before she risked it all. "Just don't let anyone interrupt me."

She let her mind fly back to the forbidden jutsu she had read of so long ago, her fingers slowly and carefully forming the required seals and she dragged them from the depths of her memory. And then she pressed her hands to her right thigh.

Tsunade had told her jutsus simply couldn't be performed on the cellular level, but Sakura wasn't trying to work on the cellular level.

Blood cells came from bone marrow, and Sakura was trying to somehow alter the potential white cells in her bone marrow to conform to the specifics described in the forbidden jutsu...but only those in her right thigh. She was attempting to limit the jutsu to only effect the marrow she was concentrating on, and not all the white blood cells in her body.

She wasn't working on the cellular level...just something very close to it.

Reaching deep inside herself, Sakura forced chakra into her bone marrow, forcing it to produce a sudden stream of white cells that she could sense like a spurt of hot water in a cold lake. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it, could almost hold it in her hands.

And then, she began to truly perform the jutsu, trying to prompt the white cells into recognising the bacteria, into knowing them as an enemy, being capable of destroying them...

Even if they couldn't destroy anything else.

The actual jutsu was rather easy, but Sakura could feel it trying to slide from under her hands like a writhing eel, trying to spread across her body, effect all her white cells at once, and she fought to contain it. This was her jutsu, her body – it would obey her, it would do as she willed...

Tsunade sighed as Sakura's vitals began to spike. In all her decades of experience as a medic, she had never heard of anyone doing something like this – of anyone somehow limiting a jutsu to effect only one small portion of the body instead of the whole.

But then again, she'd never seen any medic like Sakura.

-xxx-

Sasuke and Naruto had bolted for the sterile room the first time they had seen a slightly strange blip on the monitors at the nurses' station. Unfortunately, it took some time to go through the sterilisation procedure, and it was at least ten minutes before they finally burst into Sakura's room.

To find – to their surprise – Sakura sitting up in bed, her hands pressed over her right thigh, the soft glow of chakra hovering between her fingers, sweat shining on her skin...while Tsunade stood by the bed, making no move to help her.

"Let her be!" the Hokage snapped when Sasuke and Naruto began to start towards the bed.

"_Why?_" Naruto yelped.

"She's performing a jutsu that could save her life," Tsunade said sharply.

"Why aren't you doing it?" Sasuke asked, the faintest hint of accusation in his too-level voice.

"Because I doubt I'd be capable of it," Tsunade shrugged. That statement didn't sting – on the contrary, she felt the sort of pride a mother might feel when her daughter exceeds all her expectations.

She watched Sakura's teammates blink uncomprehendingly at her.

"Did you ever wonder why Sakura was such a skilled medic?" she asked. "Why she surpassed me so quickly?"

Sasuke's eyes flickered between Tsunade and Sakura, wondering what the Hokage's point was. Sakura was now concentrating so hard she'd bitten into her lip, and drops of sweat were dripping from her nose and chin, small spots darkening the blanket.

"Every new medic dreads it, but we all have to go through it sometime – our first death," Tsunade went on. "The first time a patient dies under our hands. We mourn it, we curse it, we get drunk over it...but we don't understand it. Don't understand why our jutsus weren't enough that one time, don't understand exactly what pushes someone over that invisible line or how to drag people back once they step over it. We rage against it, puzzle over it...but eventually, we accept it."

Tsunade paused for a moment. "Sakura didn't."

She glanced back at her apprentice, still so deep in concentration she hadn't even noticed Naruto and Sasuke entering the room, and continued, "Sakura's first death happened when she had just turned fourteen; one of her first patients, unfortunately. Perhaps that's why she didn't accept it. Anyway, when she left the hospital that night, I followed her. I think I wanted to make sure she was coping with it. And when I saw her walk to the river, strip down to her underwear and wade into the water, I thought she was going for a swim."

The corners of Tsunade's mouth flickered, as though she were about to smile, but decided against it. "But then she took a kunai...and plunged it into her stomach."

Sasuke started, and Naruto was left gaping at the Hokage.

"But Sakura..." the blonde man fumbled. "She's not..."

"I called to her," Tsunade narrated, as though she hadn't heard Naruto. "But she told me to keep back – said she needed to do it. I didn't understand, until I realised she was suffusing her body with chakra; not to heal the damage...but simply to feel what was happening. I think she was trying to understand why that shinobi had been beyond her ability to save, to learn every detail of death so she could fight it. The rest of us...we've learned to think of death as inevitable...but Sakura thought of death as an enemy she could learn to defeat. And you know how the saying goes – to defeat your enemy, first you must know your enemy."

The blonde woman laughed a little, as though sharing a grim joke. "So she got to know death in the only way she could. She brought it upon herself and felt it work through her body."

Tsunade shook her head, as though inwardly marveling. "She let herself bleed...and bleed...and bleed. And then, when there was no turning back, when I was almost convinced I was about to see my apprentice die in front of me...she began to try to heal herself."

Sasuke could see it in his mind's eye. Sakura standing in the river, the stained kunai clenched in her hand, a dark ribbon of blood blood striping through the water behind her.

"It took hours," Tsunade said quietly. "I won't venture to guess how close she came to dying, or how many times she hovered on the brink. I just remembered staring at her, struggling to heal herself as she continued to lose blood, knowing that she was on the brink of dying before my eyes...and yet somehow, not daring to interrupt."

Tsunade's eyes misted slightly as she remembered when Sakura had finally healed herself. Dawn had been breaking, making the scene seem almost holy as the ugly rent in her flesh finally mended. As her eyes opened, deepened by knowledge, and she waded back towards her teacher, a soft smile on her face.

"Afterwards, it was like healing had become almost effortless to her," Tsunade mused. "As though the line that was invisible to the rest of us had been inked out in black paint. I won't say she stopped losing patients, because she still did – there are always some you just can't save – but it was different. It was as though she understood it in a way that went beyond the intellectual, that was more like instinct to her."

Another half-snort of ironic laughter. "With that single, bold decision, Sakura came into an understanding of her own abilities my long years of study had never gained me. And as far as I know, she never told anyone. You two will be the first to know outside the two of us."

Silence descended for a moment.

"I liked that story – it made me sound a lot cooler than I actually was."

All three turned their heads so fast a small crackling echoed in the room.

Sakura was leaning against her pillows, sweaty, exhausted...but with a content smile and a decidedly triumphant look on her face.

-xxx-

_AN: As usual, thanks to justcallmefaye, my magnificent beta._

_Also, I apologise if I didn't manage to reply to your review, but I had my first exam yesterday._


	10. The Long Road

**Chapter 10**

**The Long Road**

Tsunade recovered first. "Well, it was a pretty gutsy thing to do, you must admit."

"I'd just had a patient die on me," Sakura pointed out. "Don't confuse gutsy with stupid and impulsive."

She looked like she was about to go on, but a sudden bout of coughs doubled her over in the bed, leaving her gasping as blood dribbled from her lips.

"Sakura!" Naruto's shocked paralysis broke at the sight of blood staining her hand. "You're still sick! But Granny said you were going to make yourself better-"

"Give it time, Naruto," Sakura interrupted, exasperation clear in her voice as she wiped her stained hand with a tissue. "It's going to take a while for the white cells to circulate and deal with all of the bacteria. And even assuming everything goes to plan, it's going to take a while for all the damage the bacteria did to heal."

"Oh." Naruto relaxed a little. "But...you're still going to get better, right?"

Sakura grinned and nodded.

The whole scenario slid through Sasuke's mind like a nonsensical puppet show; he watched it happen, but that actual weight behind the events eluded him. His brain felt like a dry sponge – spent, completely empty, and utterly unable to process what was happening.

But one fact stood out in glaring neon lights – Sakura wasn't going to die.

And his mind couldn't seem to cope with it. He didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say...

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Tsunade took the decision out of his hands. "Get out of here, you two – I need to check her over!"

Naruto nodded, practically bouncing out of the room, feeling as though he had been given three birthdays together. Of course, they didn't know if this was actually going to cure Sakura...but both she and Tsunade had all but said point blank that she was out of danger!

And that was a victory in Naruto's book.

"You never actually told me why you removed your clothes that night," Tsunade mused as the males left, automatically checking Sakura's temperature and using a stethoscope to listen to her breathing.

"I was planning on stabbing myself," Sakura explained. "I didn't want to get them all bloody."

Tsunade took Sakura's temperature, peered at her tongue, checked the manipulation of her joints and in general investigated everything she could without the aid of laboratory tests. There was no real change in Sakura's condition; she still had a fever, her joints were still tender, her lungs were still congested and probably bleeding...but then again, Tsunade hadn't really expected to see a change. Sakura hadn't eradicated the bacteria and healed herself; all she'd done was give her body the tools it needed to fight. It would be a while before her altered white cells began to make any impact on the chakra-eaters.

-xxx-

"She's going to be okay..." Naruto muttered, for what must have been the fiftieth time. "She's really going to be okay!"

But Sasuke didn't even glare at him. His body and mind felt like a limp rag, as if every drop of thought and feeling had been wrung from him.

"You know," Naruto said with an abrupt change of tone. "You should make a move already."

Sasuke was rather surprised, to say the least. He knew that Naruto wasn't as oblivious as he let people think, but to say something this bluntly was...

...exactly what Naruto would do, who was he kidding?

"I mean, if this wasn't enough of a wake-up call for you, I don't know what is," the blonde continued, perfectly calmly. "I know you've got your little set of hang-ups and hell will probably freeze over before you actually do anything, but if another crisis comes along again and Sakura...and she...dies, or something...and you two are still, you know, like this...you'll probably hate yourself for the rest of your life."

Sasuke was silent.

"So you should make a move. Just thought I should say that," Naruto finished.

Neither said anything; there was really nothing left to say.

-xxx-

"He's still asleep?" Ino muttered as she exited the bathroom, wrapping the hair she had just washed in a towel.

Hinata smiled, her fingers stroking through Naruto's spiky hair as he snored gently. He'd burst in two hours ago, proclaiming that Sakura had cured herself, and made a valiant effort at holding a conversation with her for about fifteen minutes before falling asleep.

"Give the guy a break, Ino," Chouji said. "I don't think he slept at all last night."

Ino nodded. She could sympathize; she suspected the only reason she'd slept last night was because the disease tended to leave its victims exhausted.

Shikamaru was still sleeping. Ino had shaken him awake to hear the news about Sakura, but then he'd promptly dropped off again. The blonde couldn't help the slightly dizzy smile that spread over her face as she glanced at him.

It was almost funny. Last night everything had seemed so dark and depressing and today everything all sunshine and rainbows. Granted, she and a large portion of the ninja population were still infected by the chakra-eaters and the medics were still running themselves ragged...but no one was on death's door. More importantly, Sakura was no longer at death's door.

So Ino was feeling pretty good about the world today.

-xxx-

Sakura yawned, closing her eyes and snuggling down into her blankets. Since she'd performed that jutsu several days ago, she'd spent most of her time sleeping, her body exhausting itself as it purged the bacteria from her system. At least now when she was awake she was lucid at all times, and while her lungs were still a little fragile, she'd stopped bleeding in her stomach. They'd removed most of the IVs, and she was enjoying being able to roll over in her bed without the risk of pulling needles from her skin. Her immune system was slowing pulling itself back from the brink, but the medics still wanted to keep her in the sterile room until she had fully recovered.

She was started from her half-doze at the sound of something being set down on her bedside table. She rubbed at her eyes, half-turning to try to see who had come into the room. But all she saw was a dark head disappearing out the door...Sasuke?

She was about to call out, when her eyes landed on what he'd brought her. A small bowl of neatly sliced apple pieces.

Scarcely daring to believe Sasuke had actually been thoughtful for once, Sakura scrambled upright, grabbing for the bowl. She snatched one of the pieces and bit into it, sighing as that taste burst over her tongue. After receiving her sustenance via a glucose drip for so long, it was refreshing to finally taste something again.

And apples were among Sakura's favourite foods. In addition, wherever Sasuke had procured it from, the apple was good: fresh, crisp and juicy.

But she couldn't help wondering why Sasuke had brought her apples. Sure, she'd brought him some when he was hospitalised all those years ago, but she didn't think he had the same motives.

-xxx-

Sakura grimaced as Tsunade drew a sample of her blood. No matter how many times she'd done it herself or seen it done to others, it just felt _weird_.

"So, you're going to test it for the chakra-eaters again?" she asked, just so something could distract her.

Tsunade nodded. "That, and the scientists want to look at it. If they can somehow figure out what your white blood cells are doing, it would probably go a long way towards helping them make the vaccine."

Sakura nodded absently, feeling drowsiness beginning to claw at her again. Probably from the blood loss. It was too small to make an impact in a healthy person...but Sakura was far from healthy, even considering that her immune system was beginning to put a serious dent in the chakra-eaters. Aside from the lingering symptoms of the infection, Sakura knew her illness had left her frighteningly weak and drained. Her muscles felt like water, and she didn't want to think about how much weight she'd dropped.

Even though she was now mostly out of the danger of suffering a relapse, Sakura knew it would be a long time before her body truly recovered from the toll the illness had taken on her.

She knew the plan was to have her perform her miracle-working jutsu on all of those currently infected once she was back to full strength, but it was a shaky solution at best. For one, it would be some time until Sakura was capable of performing the jutsu again. Sure, she'd performed it once before while practically at death's door...but the energy it taxed from her was so great it would be dangerous to attempt such a feat again – the only reason she'd tried it in the first place was that if she didn't, she would have died anyway. Now that she was healthy, Tsunade had said they couldn't justify such a risk to her life again, especially when the patients were being held at a semi-stable state.

The other problem was that she would only be able to perform the jutsu perhaps once in several days. Tsuande had told her that none of the other medics possessed the chakra control required for it; it was simply beyond their ability. Sakura thought she might be able to teach some of them if she could demonstrate it, show them exactly what to do...but again, that could only be done once she was up and about again.

And even then, what would happen if the disease spread? If some of their allied villages became infected too?

In short, it seemed the weight of truly vanquishing this disease rested squarely on the shoulders of the scientists. They needed a vaccine they could dose the ninja population with, just in case Akatsuki ever tried this again. They needed a vaccine they could present to their allied villages, just in case Akatsuki attacked them with this disease next.

They needed a vaccine, period.

-xxx-

Tsunade had been staring at the cells writhing under the microscope for at least half an hour. She was starting to get eye-strain, but she didn't look away for even a moment. She was watching Sakura's white cells slowly subsume and destroy the chakra-eaters in the petri dish. And some part of her thought that if she looked hard enough, for long enough...they might discover exactly what her white cells were doing that enabled them to destroy the bacteria.

They looked like they were behaving the way any white cells would...except seeing as these could destroy the chakra-eaters where no others had been able to, they were obviously doing something different.

But what?

-xxx-

Sakura ran her fingers through her hair with a dreamy sigh. After going so long without washing it, it was nice to soft, slightly-damp locks instead of stringy, greasy ones. The medics had done their best with sponge baths and the like while she was confined to her bed, but there were some things that really required a proper shower.

She could make it to the toilet on her own, she could shower, she could eat, and she was starting to feel human again. Sakura was eager to get a clean bill of health; she needed to get out this room before she was driven mad by sheer boredom.

Since she'd begun to recover and her condition wasn't as critical as it had been, Naruto and Sasuke's visits had dropped off. It was no decision on their part; now that she didn't need babysitters, the medics were recruiting them for other jobs and Sakura didn't see them nearly so often anymore.

But when she did see them, Sasuke seemed to be acting a little...off. Not outright strange, just...off. He'd come in, sometimes bringing apples (which was another thing Sakura couldn't figure out), stand around awkwardly for a few moments, then leave. Sakura had tried to puzzle out his behaviour and his motives, but the closest analogy she'd come up with was a schoolboy trying to summon enough courage to ask his crush to the dance. And seeing as this was Sasuke, that theory was thrown straight out the window on principal.

The door cracked open, and a blonde head peered in. "Hey, Sakura, are you awake?"

"Yeah, come on in."

Sakura couldn't help marveling as Naruto practically sprang into the room. She had never figured out where he got all his energy from – maybe it was all that ramen he ate...

"How's everything going?" he asked, planting himself on one side of the mattress, beaming at her.

"I'm bored," Sakura said bluntly, offering him some of her sliced fruit. "Apple?"

Naruto took a slice and practically swallowed it whole. "So...guess Sasuke was in here, huh?"

The medic nodded. "Yeah – him and his apples. I just don't get what's up with him lately; he's acting kinda funny, he's giving me apples practically every time he sees me – if I didn't know better, I'd say he'd been into the morphine. But maybe my whole near-death experience sort of creeped him out a little or something..."

Naruto made an unintelligible sound, and Sakura broke from her rambling to note the dark flush decorating his cheeks.

"You know something about this." It wasn't a question.

Naruto shifted, hoping he wasn't about break out in a cold sweat. He could never lie to Sakura; sure, he could try, but he'd always sucked at it.

"Naruto..." Even though she was bedridden, Sakura managed to sound threatening.

"Well...I might have...kinda sorta said something..."

If anything, Sakura's confusion only deepened. "What, you told Sasuke to be nicer to me?"

"Er...kinda..." Naruto was looking dangerously close to panic.

"Naruto..." There was that threatening tone again, the sort she employed when he tried to talk about one of his so-called 'perverted jutsu' (and they weren't perverted, they were inspired, dammit!).

So Naruto just blurted everything out. "He was being all moody and he looked kinda shocked so I just told him this should have been a wake-up call for him and he better make a move because he's been wanting to do it for ages and I figured he kinda sorta loves you a bit and you kinda sorta love him a bit back so if he makes a move you two will date and be happy and...and please don't kill me!"

Sakura blinked. It was all she was capable of. Naruto had told Sasuke to make a move on her? And he'd listened? So all those vaguely awkward visits and apple slices had been Sasuke's way of...making a move on her?

She didn't think what she was feeling could be called shock. It was too big to be called shock. This was 'the sun rises in the west', 'the sky is actually green', 'up is really down' and 'great white sharks aren't actually carnivores', sort of feeling. There was a large helping of shock in it, but it was also mixed with a lot of confusion, disbelief, and a hundred other emotions she probably could never name if she dwelled on them for a century.

So she simply blinked, staring at Naruto while he fidgeted and wondered if his friend's brain had short-circuited.

And it was this scene that Sasuke walked into barely three minutes later.

-xxx-

_AN: Sorry about not replying to comments – again! Again, blame my exams! They've only recently finished and I figured you guys would appreciate a new chapter more than a reply. As, as I'm sure everyone knows by this point, this chapter was beta-d by justcallmefaye._


	11. Rejuvenation

**Chapter 11**

**Rejuvenation**

Sasuke frowned at his friends, both of whom seemed to be in some sort of shock. Sakura was staring at him as though she'd never seen him before, and Naruto looked like he was trying to sink into the ground and disappear forever.

"Are you okay?" he asked when neither of them moved.

Sakura's mind dimly registered that Sasuke had come into the room, and that he'd asked her a question. She blinked several times, hoping to rattle her brain into working again...had Naruto really meant...?

And now that she looked for it, she could see it. To anyone else, Sasuke would have appeared as he always did: cold, aloof and expressionless...but Sakura knew better. She could see the way his shoulder hunched a little, the slight wariness in his eyes, the way he was clutching the plate of apple pieces just a shade more tightly than was necessary.

Sakura never would have thought Sasuke capable of it, but he looked...vulnerable, almost worried.

It was probably a good thing he hadn't come in time to hear Naruto blurt everything out.

Naruto, of course, took the opportunity to make himself scarce. "I-I gotta...I'm going to...to see Hinata, bye!"

And he bolted from the room like a cat confronted with a hose.

Sakura watched him go, still rather stunned.

"I...brought you some more apple pieces..." Sasuke said, placing the plate on the bedside table and shifting uncomfortably.

"Thanks," Sakura beamed, taking a slice from the fresh plate and ignoring that fact that she still had a half-full one on her lap. "Any other reason you came?"

She knew this might be considered a little cruel: deliberately baiting Sasuke when she knew very well what he was trying to do...but, dammit, she though she'd earned a little fumbling and groveling on his part after what he'd put her through!

Sasuke pressed his lips together, relaxed them, looked like he was about to speak...then looked down at the plate of apple slices. Then he did it again. And again. The cycle repeated several times, and Sakura sensed Sasuke was about to make a strategic retreat out of sheer mortification.

Apparently years of emotional repression wasn't going to be undone in a moment – no big surprise there, but Sakura figured she'd have to give him a helping hand at least, if not guide him through this entirely.

"Sasuke..." she sighed at last, shaking her head. "You really suck at making a move."

When his eyes found hers in shock, she grabbed his collar and used it as leverage to pull him down to her level before she pressed her lips against his in a brief, chaste kiss.

It was nice – _really_ nice – and Sakura didn't really want to stop, but she forced herself to.

"Now, as soon as I get better and this whole disease-thing is cleared up, we can go get lunch sometime," Sakura announced, hoping her face didn't betray the anxiety she felt. Sure, Naruto had said he was trying to make a move on her, but years of rejections had left her far from confident when it came to Sasuke.

Sasuke, for his part, was still trying to work out how he'd lost control of the situation. For that matter, how had Sakura known he was going to make a move?

He felt the same way he imagined a highwire walker would if they slipped. Frightened, nauseous, dizzy with the possibility of failure...

Then he saw the hint of insecurity in her eyes and felt strangely reassured. This was important to her too.

So he drew the fragments of his dignity to himself and nodded, "I'd like that."

"Good." It didn't seem possible, but Sakura felt her smile grow wider. "Now...another kiss?"

A small bubble of happiness swelled in the medic's chest as Sasuke obeyed her suggestion with a satisfied smirk.

_'And that's how you make a move!'_ she thought triumphantly.

-xxx-

Chouji groaned. "Come on, guys, I need someone to talk to – this is very unfair!"

Hinata and Naruto didn't seem to hear him, and appeared quite content to continue kissing. But Shikamaru and Ino disengaged and turned to him, their lips slightly swollen.

The disadvantage of sharing a room with a couple and one half of a couple (when the other half visited every spare moment he got) was that they spent a lot of time very heavily involved with each other.

He was about to make some comment on that to his two teammates when the door opened and Tsunade came in, smiling, flushed with something that looked close to triumph...and brandishing a set of formidable-looking hypodermics.

Naruto and Hinata sprang apart, both blushing darkly.

"Wh-what are those f-for, Lady Tsunade?" Hinata asked, nodding at the needles.

"We have found a cure!" the Hokage announced, holding up a vial filled with clear liquid.

Around the room, eyes widened and lips parted in astonishment like a troupe of synchronized mimes.

And then they all snapped out of it at once.

"Really?" Naruto bounced up from Hinata's bed like a jack-in-the-box.

"I knew it would happen!" Ino crowed. "No stupid disease is going to take us down!"

"Th-that's very g-good news," Hinata said quietly, a timid smile hovering on her face, as though she were almost afraid to celebrate too soon.

"At least this troublesome business will finally be over..." Shikamaru drawled.

"How?" Chouji wondered. "I mean, if you don't mind me asking..."

"We were studying Sakura's white cells to see how they were capable of defeating the bacteria," Tsunade explained. "And the scientists found that they were producing an enzyme that somehow stopped the bacteria from being able to draw on their host's chakra, rendering them vulnerable to the immune system and antibiotics. We're not sure how to induce other people's white cells to produce this enzyme, but we've been farming it in the laboratory...and now we have enough."

"Enough to do what?" Naruto asked, eyeing the needles mistrustfully.

"Enough to inject the enzyme into the people infected," Tsunade went on, already preparing the first needle. "Hinata, please hold out your non-dominant arm."

Hinata did as instructed, and Tsunade injected the enzyme into the vein at her elbow.

"Sakura's body is producing it naturally," the blonde woman continued as she prepared to inject Chouji. "So we're certain it has no detrimental effect. And since we've isolated the chemical alone, we don't need to worry about matching blood types."

She moved onto Shikamaru. "Although since your bodies don't produce it naturally, you're probably going to have suffer through these injections at regular intervals until the bacteria have been completely eradicated."

"Neat," Ino pronounced, grinning broadly. "So...we'll be cured, soon, huh?"

"As soon as possible," Tsunade confirmed.

"Alright!" Naruto practically crowed. "Then we can go out, Hinata, just like I promised."

The Hyuuga girl smiled shyly and nodded.

"And I can collect on that dinner you owe me," Ino smirked at Shikamaru.

-xxx-

"You really think these will work?" Kiba wondered aloud, staring with morbid fascination at the bloody ball of cotton wool he had been instructed to keep pressed to the puncture in his skin.

"By all accounts, I think so," Tenten said, her arm bent to keep her own cotton ball against the needle mark. "After all, this is what Sakura's cells are making, right? And Tsunade says she's getting better all the time..."

"If it would get me out of this hospital, I would be quite happy to let the Hokage inject me with acid," Neji commented.

Tenten chuckled, blowing him a kiss in a rare act of blatant flirtation. The idea that they might be able to rejoin the rest of the world soon was rather exciting to her as well; they'd spent far too long in these hospital beds.

-xxx-

Two and a half weeks later, Tsunade stood back with some satisfaction as she watched her patients finally leave the isolation wing.

They were a little shaky, but that was to be expected – weeks of being practically bed-ridden did nothing for muscle tone. Sakura especially was looking a little on the fragile side, and she'd already yelled at Sasuke for scaring an intern at the hospital who'd really done nothing more serious than breathe on her.

Naruto and Sasuke had been the most difficult to cure; seeing as the chakra-eaters infecting them were in dormant form, the enzyme would do nothing as the bacteria weren't feeding off their chakra.

Then one of the scientists had pointed out that if the chakra-eaters were in dormant form their immune systems could probably deal with them adequately, given a week or so. After all, the only reason the other patients' immune systems couldn't eradicate the bacteria in time was because it only took a couple of days for them to become set to the host's chakra signature, and become invulnerable to the immune system from then on. In fact, the only reason Naruto and Sasuke weren't bacteria-free was because they were constantly being re-infected by contact with the patients.

So, that decided, Tsunade had shoved both Naruto and Sasuke into two of the other isolation rooms, though neither of them had been very happy about it. Naruto had been practically bouncing off the walls, and towards the end of the week he was so stir-crazy and hyperactive that Tsunade had seriously considered sedating him. Sasuke had been even more aloof and irritable than usual, though she had a feeling most of that stemmed from the fact that he hadn't been allowed to see Sakura.

She wasn't sure how she felt about her student's nascent relationship with the Uchiha. On the one hand, it made Sakura happy, but on the other hand, Sasuke was...Sasuke. Of course, she couldn't be sure how much of this was unbiased judgment and how much of it was latent maternal instincts insisting that no man would ever be good enough for Sakura. But she was sure of one thing; if Sasuke hurt her, she'd make him very sorry for it.

But putting her emotions aside for a moment, the Hokage had other, larger problems to deal with. The Akatsuki. Their attempt to take down Konoha might have failed (and Tsunade would ensure that the enzyme was shipped to their allies just in case the organization tried the same tactic on another village) but they would be sure to try again.

The Akatsuki had become a problem they could no longer ignore or put off. They had to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Tsunade knew many councilors objected to the idea of trying to hunt Akatsuki down and eliminate them, if only because they stood to lose a lot of shinobi in such an effort...but a line had to be drawn somewhere.

And she was drawing it here. Akatsuki had become too much of a problem for them not to take action.

Besides, she already knew which teams she was going to send.

-xxx-

Kakashi's mask hid his smirk, but Sasuke knew it was there.

"You two seem closer," he commented, gesturing down at Sasuke's and Sakura's linked hands.

"Hn." Sasuke refused to blush. It would be foolish to blush; he and Sakura had kissed, for god's sake – that was far more intimate than holding hands and he hadn't blushed then!

And the holding hands-thing wasn't even his idea. They'd been walking out of the hospital and Sakura had simply seized his hand in hers. And he hadn't dropped her hand or shaken her off because...he hadn't really felt like it. It had felt...nice.

"Don't start with any smart comments, Kakashi," Sakura grinned cheekily, enjoying the feel of sunshine on her skin and fresh air in her lungs.

"I wasn't going to say a thing," Kakashi said with mock-innocence, the line of his visible eye curving as it did when he smiled.

The Sakura in front of him was a little paler than the one he remembered, a little thinner...but she was smiling fit to put the sun to shame and was perfectly, marvelously, gloriously _alive_!

And Kakashi was more relieved than he'd ever admit.

Sakura's smile became softer as she watched Kakashi's face grow more somber, and she didn't have to think hard to know what was on his mind. She knew he would never say he had been worried about it – he just wasn't like that – so she simply smiled for him and let him ruffle her hair the way he had done when she had been a genin, offering him silent but tangible reassurance.

"You owe me dinner!" Kakashi's attention was attracted by Ino's proclamation. The blonde was trotting out of the hospital doors beside Shikamaru, her grin even wider than Sakura's. "And I expect some nice restaurant, I'll have you know, not some cheap bowl of ramen at Ichiraku..."

"Troublesome woman," Shikamaru muttered, his sentiment rather contradicted by the smile that seemed to be hovering just under the skin of his face, as though ready to fly out at the slightest nudge.

"Ichiraku _is_ a nice restaurant!" Naruto insisted, loudly defending his favourite eatery. "I'm taking Hinata there for our date!"

Said Hyuuga blushed like a ripe cherry, and Kakashi snickered.

"Aren't they cute?" Sakura cooed, watching the two couples wander away from the hospital.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, and she promptly elbowed him gently in the side. "Agree with me!"

"...hn."

"Close enough."

Neji and Tenten had greeted the waiting Lee and Gai with a weary but fond smile in Tenten's case and a less frosty demeanor than usual in Neji's. Kakashi had quite deliberately tuned out the past several minutes of conversation (which, he was certain, had contained many references to the couple's youthful healing vigour or something along those lines) but it seemed that Neji and Tenten had taken their leave of their teammates and were departing together, heading in the direction of the training grounds.

Kakashi had always thought that training with your lover probably gave a very kinky lean to sparring. But then again, his choice of reading material might have skewed his perceptions a little.

Akamaru was running joyous, howling rings around Kiba, sniffing every inch of the man, licking frantically at his chin as dogs did when they were reunited with a pack member. Kiba was scruffing his loyal partner's ears in return whenever the dog was still enough.

Chouji was making his way back to his home, muttering something about getting proper food after weeks of eating hospital meals. Kakashi could sympathize – his own ninja career meant he'd been hospitalised more times than he could count, and the one thing he'd always despised was the food he was given. Disliking hospital food was a big cliché, but clichés formed because they had a basis in fact.

In short, the village seemed to have suddenly – without any warning – returned to normal. Looking at the people around him, Kakashi never would have guessed that they'd been laid up in hospital, battling a disease specifically designed to kill them.

But then again, they were ninja, and they bounced back a lot faster than civilians did.

It was rather strange to think that the disease which had plagued the village for months had been dealt with so quickly.

"Anyway, we're off to lunch, now," Sakura went on. "Thanks for your blood, by the way, Kakashi."

"No problem," her erstwhile teacher rejoined, taking out his infamous book and flipping through it. "Though it seems kind of morbid to thank me for it..."

Sakura shrugged, then began pulling Sasuke down the road. "Come on, I want to check out that new seafood place – although I guess it's not really new now, when you consider how long we've been in the hospital..."

Kakashi gave them a careless wave which, predictably, Sakura returned and Sasuke didn't. He smirked to himself, turning away to see the Hokage standing by the hospital doors, Shizune at her side again. Tsunade looked extremely satisfied and well-pleased...but there was a hint of grim resolve behind her eyes.

Apparently sensing Kakashi's eyes on her, her head turned towards him. She regarded him silently for a moment, as though weighing something within her mind, before she gestured him over.

Not knowing what she could want, Kakashi closed his book and approached.

-xxx-

"So we're going to be hunting down the Akatsuki?" Naruto echoed.

"Not really hunting down," Tsunade clarified. "But whenever we have information on a sighting, or an incident that might be connected to the organisation...you four will be dispatched to find and eliminate any Akatsuki you encounter."

Naruto grinned. Sasuke smirked. Sakura and Kakashi – not quite as knuckle-headed as the other two – looked a little grimmer, but there was a flare of excitement in their eyes nevertheless.

"It should also be noted that yours won't be the only team doing this," she added. "Team 10, Team 8 and Team Gai will also be assigned this mission."

The only way Tsunade had gotten the council to agree to this proposal was if the teams in question continued with their usual roster of missions when not responding to an Akatsuki sighting. Multiple teams enlisted insured at least one group would be in the village and available at any one time.

Sheer strength of numbers was also a factor. Tsunade knew how dangerous this mission would be, and the more powerful ninja in it, the higher the likelihood of everyone surviving.

"Your first mission," the Hokage continued, tossing a scroll at them which Kakashi caught. "The Akatsuki sighting in Wave. Find out if this disease was all they did, and if they're still nearby. Kakashi, you're in charge. Dismissed."

-xxx-

Ten minutes later, after weapons and assorted shinobi trappings had been assembled and apartments locked up, Team 7 stood by the gates of Konoha, performing a last minute equipment check.

Kakashi, Sasuke and Naruto had already finished cataloging their items, but Sakura was still sorting through her medical supplies. Kakashi had often felt rather sorry for medical ninja; their extensive med-kits often meant they were carrying almost twice as much as other ninja. Sometimes he wondered if Tsunade had developed her super strength just so she could carry her equipment.

"Come on, Sakura, we need to go!" Naruto whined.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, and Sakura pointedly ignored the blonde, her mind too busy to retort.

"Sakuraaaaa..."

"Idiot," Sasuke scoffed. "Has it occurred to you that these medical supplies will probably end up saving your ass when you get it trampled on, as always?"

Naruto opened his mouth to bellow some retort or denial, but Kakashi rapped him sharply on the head with the spine of his book. They were about to set off; he couldn't be bothered to deal with one of their arguments yet.

Sakura shoved her med-kit into her bulging pack and smiled at her boyfriend. "Thanks, Sasuke."

Then she looped her arms around his neck and pulled him close to instigate a very involved kiss.

Naruto huffed, but he was more considerate than he appeared, and he gave them a few moments. But when the kiss showed no sign of stopping, he began to whine again.

"Come on, guys, we need to go!"

No response.

"This is unfair! You can't rub the fact that you two get to do missions together while me and Hinata can't in my face!"

Still no response.

Kakashi shook his head in exasperation, turned around and took to the trees, confident that his former students would follow. His keen ears caught Naruto's complaining grumble as Sakura and Sasuke disengaged.

"Are you guys going to be like this for the entire trip?"

**End.**

-xxx-

_AN: Thanks to justcallmefaye for beta-ing this chapter, and thanks to everyone who reviewed this story – I couldn't have done it without you! Well, I probably could have, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun._


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